�ensu of Ploce

Publication of the Advanced Seminar Series is made possible by

generous support from the Brown Foundation, Inc., of Houston, Texas.
SCHOOL OF AMER
ICAN RESEARCH AD

Senies of Place
VANCED SEMINAR SER
1 s w.. Schwartz, Gene
Douga IES
ral Editor

CONTRIBUTORS

Keith H. Basso
Department of Anthropology
University of New Mexico

Karen I. Blu
Department of Anthropology
New York University

Edward S. Casey
Department of Philosophy
State University of New York, Stony Brook

Steven Feld
Anthropology Board of Studies
University of California, Santa Cruz

Charles 0. Frake
Department of Anthropology
State University of New York, Buffalo

Clifford Geertz
School of Social Science
Institute for Advanced Study
Princeton, New Jersey

Miriam Kahn
Department of Anthropology
University of Washington

Kathleen C. Stewart
Department of Anthropology
University of Texas at Austin
 "We come and go,
but the land is always here.
Senses of Place
And the people who love it
ldited by �teven feld and Heith H. Bono
and understand it are the people
who own it-for a little while."

Willa Cather, 0 Pioneers!

SCHOOL OF AMERICAN RESEARCH PRESS I SANTA FE I NEW MEXICO

 GF
;} I
School of American Research Press
Post Office Box 2188
Santa Fe, New Mexico 87504-2188
S�5
Director of Publications: Joan K. O'Donnell
Editor: Jane Kepp
Contents \99 b
Designer: Deborah Flynn Post
Indexer: Douglas J. Easton
Typographer: Tseng Information Systems, Inc.

Distributed by the University of Washington Press

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Senses of place/ edited by Steven Feld and Keith H. Basso.
p. cm. - (School of American Research advanced seminar series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
List of Illustrations I ix
ISBN 0-933452-94-2 (cloth). - ISBN 0-933452-95-0 (paper)
1. Human geography-Philosophy. 2. Ethnology-Philosophy. 3. Geographical Acknowledgments I xi
perception. I. Feld, Steven. II. Basso, Keith, 1940- III. Series.
GF21.S45 1996 Introduction I 3
304.2'3-dc20 96-31354 Steven Feld and Keith H. Basso
CIP

� 1996 by the School of American Research. All rights reserved.

How to Get from Space to Place in a Fairly Short Stretch of Time:
Manufactured in the United States of America. Library of Congress Catalog Phenomenological Prolegomena I 13
Card number 96-31354. International Standard Book Numbers 0-933452-94-2 Edward S. Casey
(cloth) and 0-933452-95-0 (paper). First edition.
Wisdom Sits in Places: Notes on a Western Apache Landscape 1 53
Cover: "Road Taken. 95," by Carol Anthony. Craypas and enamel on gessoed panel.
0 1996 Carol Anthony. Courtesy the Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe. Photo by D an Keith H. Basso
Morse.
Waterfalls of Song: An Acoustemology of Place Resounding in
Bosavi, Papua New Guinea 1 91
Steven Feld

4 An Occupied Place I 137

Kathleen C. Stewart

Your Place and Mine: Sharing Emotional Landscapes in Wamira,

Papua New Guinea I 167
Miriam Kahn

"W here Do You Stay At?": Homeplace and Community among the
Lumbee 1 197
Karen I. Blu
viii I Contrnu

Pleasant Places, Past Times, and Sheltered Identity in Rural East

Anglia I 229
Charles 0. Frake

Afterword I 259 Illustrations

Clifford Geertz

References 1 263
Index I 283

2.1 Cottonwood tree at Trail Goes Down Between Two Hills I 62

3.1 Ulahi sings at the Wo:lu creek I 115
3.2 Gulu creek 1 124
3.3 The surgingfoo- ofSo:lo: waterfall, 133
4.1 Amigo, West Virginia I 138
4.2 Devil's Fork Creek, Amigo I 142
4.3 Sylvie Hess's place, Odd, West Virginia I 145
4.4 Lance Smith on porch, Amigo I 147
4.5 Bridge on the 'Migo-Rhodell road I 163
5.1 Sybil Gisewa and Hilarion Watiwati I 171
5.2 Tamodukorokoro, the fertile plain behind Wamira I 176
5.3 Marakwadiveta in the hills above Warnira I 177
5.4 Tauanana surrounded by her children I 181
5.5 Tauribariba, Dogura cathedral I 183
5.6 T he Dararugu stones in Worewore I 185
6.1 Robeson County, North Carolina I 203
7.1 The northeast Norfolk landscape 1 232
7.2 Advertisement for map of Norfolk County, 1797 I 242
 Acknowledaments

The essays presented here were first written for a School of American Re­
search advanced seminar titled "Place, Expression, and Experience," held
in March-April 1993. Because of length constraints, this volume omits
one paper prepared for the advanced seminar, "Creating a Heterotopia:
An Analysis of the Spacetime of Olmsted's and Vaux's Central Park," by
Nancy D. Munn.
Speaking from our position as conveners, we thank the seminar par­
ticipants for their essays, for their spirited discussions, and for their
patience through the rewriting and publishing phase of the project. Their
enthusiasm helped enlarge what was, for us at least, a more circumscribed
dialogue about matters of place and making place matter.
I For their generous support of the advanced seminar, we thank the
School of American Research and the Wenner-Gren Foundation for
Anthropological Research. The hospitality of SAR president Douglas
Schwartz, conference coordinator Cecile Stein, and their staff made the
meeting relaxed and enjoyable. For help with manuscript preparation,
we are grateful to Frances Terry and to the staff of the SAR Press.
 Introduction
Steven Feld ond Keith H. Basso

A
recent spate of writings on the subject of place, both within and
across academic disciplines, obliges us to begin with a si mple ques­
tion: What is meant to be the contribution of this book? How does
it differ from and how does it mesh with developing trends in con­
temporary scholarship? In particular, what were the aims of this group
of authors in circulating their papers prior to an advanced seminar at
the School of American Research in 1993, coming together in Santa Fe
to discuss them, and then rethinking and revising them in light of the
group meeting, readers' responses, and further attention to the growing
body of literature?
First, the broader setting. Readers interested in place are no doubt
aware of valuable contributions made lately by cultural geographers,
many of whom have adopted interpretive frameworks similar to those
familiar to anthropologists. Some of these frameworks are pointedly
humanistic (Buttimer 1993; Entrikin 1991; J. Jackson 1994), emerging
from a lineage of inquiry into place and lived experiences, particularly
experiences of rootedness, uprootedness, or transrootedness (Bachelard
1964; Buttimer and Seamon 1980; Cosgrove 1984; Lowenthal 1985;
Relph 1976; Tuan 1977). The cultural geographers' work, which tends
to incorporate a good deal of modern philosophical thought, is often
guided by ideas on "dwelling" described in the phenomenology of
Martin Heidegger (1971). These ideas are variously blended with social
theory, sometimes producing syntheses bearing affinities to the socio­
logical notion of "placeways" developed in the work of E. V. Walter
(1988), and at other times producing critical and deconstructive analyses
for application in the fields of environmental design, urban planning,
and architecture (Mugerauer 1994; Seamon 1992).
An equally prominent trend in cultural geography is centrally con­
cerned with neo-Marxist cultural critique and with global postmodern
 INUOOUCTION I !
4 I mm FILO ANO IEITH H. BA!!O

the?ry (Harvey 1989; P. Jackson 1989; Soja 1989). Accordin gly, many I n this light it is hardly surpr ising that anthropol ogists have come
of its proponents position their writing in relation to geographies of to worr y less about place in broad phil osophical or humanistic terms
struggle and resistanc e, especially those writers who embrace issues of than about places as sites of power struggles or about displace ment as
repres ntation, gender, a nd political actio n (D un can and Ley 1993; Keith
histories of annexation, absorption, and resistance . Thus, ethnography's
: stories of place and pl aces are inc reasin gly about contestation . And this
and Pile 1993; Massey 1994). Most of these authors are cle arly indebted
to Michel_ Foucault's exposition (1970, 1979, 1986) of pan opticism and makes them consistent with a larger n arrative in which previousl y absent
heterotopia_s, ai:1d t�ey take as their star ting points his spatial analyses of "others" are now por trayed as fully present, no longer a presumed and L-­
dista nt "them" r emoved from a vague a nd tacit "u
s." These stories a re
repression, illSt1tut10 nal power, and social control . black-lined borders
pl aced a nd in motio n on a worl d map whos e o n c e
Perspecti�es_ in cultural geography artic ulat e in var ying degrees with ss, er ased by chaos,
and boundaries are i n c re asi n gly smud g ed by vag uene
?ther hu_mamstic studies of place written by historians, cr itics, and art­ c rtai ty (Appa ai a B ck nri dge 1988; De leuze
ists: ill hterat�re and_ biography (Hiss 1990; Turner 1989), in folklore or clouded by un e n dur nd re e

and Guattari 1986; Kapfe rer 1988; Rosal d o 1988).

(Ryden �993), ill music (Stokes 1994), and in literary theory and a r t his­
tor y (Mi_tch el l 1994). And the cultural geography literature now includes Arj un Appadurai considers these a nd related matters in his introd uc­
per s�ecti�es from anthropology a nd a rchaeology in works exploring the tion to a 1988 theme issue of Cultural Anthropology, "Place and Voice in
relanons�ips_ be ween la nd scape and author ity (B ender 1993) and dia­
Anthropological Theo ry." At the outse t, Appadurai contrasts the practice
� of explicitly naming the locations to which ethnographers travel with
logues with illd1genous peoples and heritage co nser vationists about the
impor tance of protecting sacred sites (Car michael et al. 1994; Kelley and the tendency to ign ore or assume the locations from which they come .
Francis 1994). Then he links this practice to the rhetorical problem of embedding a
Alo ngside the�e t�ends, and often enough in juxtaposition to them, multiplicity of local voices in the more sing ular and synthetic voice of 1
_
the recent topicali �at10 n of �lace by c ultural anthropologists has mostly anthropological authorship. Joining those two concerns, Appadurai and
been c?ncerned _ with the�nzmg social identities. An important jumping- other authors in the symposium examine the metonymy of pl ace and
off pomt for this enterpnse was a shor t collection of essays titled Place: idea, arguing that in the realm of rep resentations, geographical regions
\ �xrerience and Symbol that brought together ethnographers and human­ are not so much physically distinct entities as discursively constructed
istic g eographer s. Most of these essays foc used on th e social well-b eing settings that signal par ticular social modalities: I ndia becomes hierarchy,
att:iched to the sense of rootedness in place -so much so that in the end New Guinea exchange, Africa segmen tatio n, and so forth.
editor Miles Richard son lamented that the e mphasis they gave to the I n a similar vein, Mar garet C. Rodman's American Anthropologist ar ticle,
rooted over the un rooted or the uprooted , to the in-pl ace over the out­ "Empowering Plac e: Multilocality and Multivocality" (1992), reviews
, and critiques the power positions and assumptions underlying e quations L
of-pl ace, was at best problematical a nd perhaps "inauth entic" (1984 :66).
Subse_quent _ work in anthropology has taken several steps beyond of "pl ac e" and "location." Rodman recommends studies of place that take
that startillg pomt by theorizing place l argely from th e standpoint of its discontinuities a nd multiplicities of voice and action into greater ac­
contestatio n a nd its linkage to local and global power relations. What­ count. Such studies, she cont ends, must reject "boundedness" models of
ever else may b e i volved , this development surel y reflects the now culture and the ways they p rivilege the authority of persons in positions
. ?
acute world cond 1t1ons of exile, d isplacement, diasporas, and inflamed of power.
b ?r ders, to say nothing of the increasingly tumultuous struggles by in­ In a more recent theme issue of Cultural Anthropology titled "Space,
d 1geno us p eoples_ and cultural minor ities for ancestral homela nds, l and
_ Identity, and the Politics of Difference;' edito rs Akhil Gupta and James
nghts, and retention of sac red pl aces. Th ese days, narratives of place once Ferguson likewise see the need for a reevaluation of the "assumed iso­
presented _ un �er sue� gentle rubrics as " national i ntegration" and "politi­ morphism of spac e, place and culture" (1992:7), a reassessment based
cal evolut10n are b eillg framed m decidedly harsher terms: as economic on critical theorizations of space "embodied in such notions as surveil­
developm ent by stat e i nvasion and occupation, or as the extr action of lance, panopticism, simulacr a, deterr itor ialization, postmodern hyper­
transn_ation al wealth at escalating costs in human suffering, cultural de­
_ space, borderland s, and marginality" (1992:6). Joining with other critics
structio n, an� environmental deg radation (Bodley 1988; B urger 1990· of anthropology's histor ical tendency to favo r representations of con­
'
Cultural Survival 1993). tained people, places, and identities, Gupta and Ferguson call for an
6 I HEYEN FELD AND UITH H. BASSO
INTRODUCTION I 7

anthrop ology of _space _grou

nded in an understanding o f the realities
0 f b oundary erosio
found our selves imagining a project that would honor the basic anthro­
n ' diasporas and di sp ersa1 , mobility and m ovement.
They tma - gm . e this pological commonplace that where m eani ng and experienc e are con­
space as one "beyond cuIture," wh cer ne d, ca reful e thnography-and with it careful attention to language
ere stabilize d ter ri-
tori. es are repIaced by
hYbri·d and flw.d zones such as borderla and language use-is basic and essential. To that end we invited ou r col­
are characteri. zed by p1�ce m nd s ' which
· deter mma . cy (see al
Rouse 1992· ' Appadurai 1992 so Gup ta, F erguson, and leagues to explore in cl ose detail cultural processes and practices through
proposes the notion o f "ethnoscapes" as which places are rendered meaningful-through which, one might say,
a res ponse to the bounded
, c ulture synd rome ; Cliff . ord 1992 critiques places are actively sensed. We a sked for lengthy es says (at least by an­
anthrop ology s pri. vilegm . g
of dwelling over travel)
More recently still, an anth thology standards) that gave top p rior ity to forms o flocal knowledge and
. oIogy tlt . 1e d The An thropology of l.Andscape: to localized form s o fexp ression. And we exp ected th e essays, when con­
P.ersp�ctwe � on P /ace and Space (Hirsch and O'
sh owmg h ow d iffere
Hanlon 1995) has appea red ' sidere d all together, to ser ve as a sp r ingbo ard for profitable discussions
nt Iines O f though
• Bn. . t th ese topics have been de - ab ou t the complex ways in which places anchor lives in soc ial forma­
velop·mg m t 1sh so ci. al anth�o
on
p_oIogy. D eriv . ed fro:11 a co�erence at tions ranging widely in geographical l ocation, in economic and p olitical
the London Schoo
l ofEconorrucs m 1989, the collec
essa
t10 n begms with an scale, and in acco mpanyi ng realms o f gender, race, class, and ethnicity.
t he co ep of
land s cape by an a rt historian.
It is followed by Because the two o f us would b e wr iting about peoples typically
nin[ :t�og ra��c �
c apters treating dimensions of pla viewed as among anthropology's most traditional and stereotypically
spat.a ce concep ts and
I l his tory m the Am
azon, Ma dagascar, India, Israel, Mongolia, Fi exotic int erlocutors-Apac he Indians a nd rainforest Papuans -we felt
ab or iginal Australia, and Pap . ji,
ua New Gumea . h .md1. cates in
. As E ri.c Hirsc strongly that the book should contain cont rastive essays about very dif­
his mt· roductor y overvi. ew eth
' nography can contri. bute much to unpack- ferent g roup s of Native Americans and Papua New Guineans, particu­
ing the Wiestern 1andscape co
ncep t, not only as i. t has mflu . ence d artistic larly tho se whose renderings of place relied less on highly aestheticize d
v1· sual r epresentatio . ns Of d
·
1stan t worIds but also as it shapes the imagi- na rr ative and poetic forms. Thu s we invite d Ka ren I. Blu to p r esent
nat.ion of rur· al Places as fixe
d and i. mmutable "elsewheres." In doing
Hi. rsch suggests 'anthrop ology so ' her research on the history of multiple claims to pla ce h eld by Lumbee
. · h t provi. de-contra more static, abso
rrug I ndians and their African-Amer ican and Anglo -American neighbo rs in
lute, or pre dorrun . antly visual ap proaches - a t -
h eori. zat10
. n oflandsc
ap as North Carolina, and Miriam Kahn to discuss the Papuan world o f the
c u1tur al p rocess that . e
is dYnarru·c, muIt •
isensual, and constantly oscilla
between a "fcore ground" 0f ting coas tal Wamirans, a world where myth s and memor ies are voice d in ma­
,, .
ground of social po tential (see
ev ery d ay Ii ved emplacement and a "back- ter ial ways, including the placement o f stones The essays by Blu and
also Tilley 1994). .
Few of the works J·ust mentio · ned had been Kahn showed us conspicuously different modes of imagining and en­
of 1990 ' wh en we �onc .
publ.ished m . the spring acting place, makirtg it clear, among oth er things, that th ere were no
eiv ed the idea o f
search advance d serrunar on "Pl a S cho ol o f American R e- monolithic Native Amer ican or Melanesia n modes o f dwelling.
ace, Expressi. on, and Exp er ience " Most
o f th e th emes we have
cited
. . r to us then, a . A more radical way to create sharp textual juxtap ositi ons, we felt,
were £a milia s were som e of
their antecedents but th se were was to emphasize places and populations who se geographical closeness
not what we talke d ab
were struck b s�meth;g more ou t . Rath er, we and presumed familiar ity made th em, ironically, more, not less, "o ther "
ba sic : t ha t while cultur al
g1. st s h ad cer tainly y done useful re anthrop olo - and remote, at le ast in ter ms ofconventional ethnographic wr iting. W ith
sea rch on place and places
accou nts that were centered on n - e' thnographic this in mind we invited Kathleen C. Stewart to discuss her work on
ative constructions ofparticular loc
t1. es -wh"ICh i.s to say th. e perc�p tt· ali· - Appalachian material and nar rative voicin gs ofruined places as tropes o f
on and exp eri. ence of
and fa r betw n. Th'. place -were few marginali ty. We also asked Nancy D. Munn to present her research o n the
ression remained int
meeti ng dur:g the ;::;:ys of act until the time of our '
March and th e first days of April 199 histor y of creating New York Ci ty s famed Central Park, and Charles 0.
although by then some welcome e 3 Frake to discuss his work on the histor y and ethnography of the English
xceptions to it: su� h as Fred My ,'
Pintupi Coun try, Pintupi Self (199 ers s count ryside. All th ree es says p resent ed us, agai n, with stylistic and sub­
1) and James Wiemer s The Empty
(1991), had become well known. Place stantive differ ences irI the activities, p rac tic es, and imagiriations invo lved
Because long-term ethnograPhi • . in makirig places bot h meanirigful and multidimensional.
c fi1eIdwork wi. th a st
fco cu s was the main shared feature o rong Iingwsu
four own .mtellectual biographie
c Motivated by our interest irI secu ring fi ne -grained ethnographic de­
s, we
scr iptions from our authors, we did not direc t them to theor ize place irI
8 I HEYEN FELD AND KEITH H. UIIO
INTRODUCTION I 9

abstract ways. At the sam

e time, we feared that witho
ut some attention Having so strongly announ ced our commitment to ethnog raphy, it
to th� hi st?rical d philosophical under
� pinnings of writin gs on place, may perhaps seem contradictor y that we started our d iscussions at the
our dis�ussions nught descend into a w
_ elter o f p articulars. For this reas on advanced semi nar, and now be gin this b ook, not with an ethnogra phic
we invited �o di stinguished theorists
to speak to and through our more essay but with a philosophical accoun t of place. This is n ot me ant to
e th n ographic explorations.
_ One, Edward S. Casey, is a philosopher long privilege a specific theoretical vantage point but rather to invoke the
co1:c_ erned with th� phenomenological
acco unt of place, and his re cent necessity of a deeper and more engaged anthrop ological d ialogue with
writing ? n the topic (Casey 1993) is st
rongly engaged i n d ialogue with the philosophy of place. Toward thi s end , Edward S. Casey renund s u s,
both soci al theor y and ethnographic inqu
iry. The other, Clifford Geer tz, in ways yet different from those he took up in Remembering (1987) and
is well k°:own for his ethnographic writi
ng s on Indonesia and Morocco Getting Back into Place (1993), of how the intimate relationship between
and for h is theoretical i
nfluence on symb olic and interp
retive t rends in embodiment and emplacement bri ngs the p roblem of place i nto close
cultural anthrop ology. By having Ca
sey and Geertz bracket and criss­ resonan ce with the anthropological problem of k nowi ng "local knowl­
cross our ethnographic accounts, we w
ere sure to d raw out the tensions
be�een phenomenological and her me edge." Followi ng the lead of Merleau-Ponty, Casey examine s how to

particularly the ten�ions inherent in the

neutic positions in social theor y,
be in place is to k now, is to become aware of one's ver y conscious ness
contrastive ways in which they and sensuous presence i n the worl d. F rom there Casey argu es tha t t�e
accou nt for per ception, m
eaning, exper ience, and i nven
tion. Add ition­ exp er i ence of place is no se condary grid overlaid on the p resumed pri­
ally, we ?oped , Cas�y's and Geertz's persp
ectives would help us confront
and clarify as sumpt10ns ab o macy of sp ace. Rather, he con tends, place i s the most fundamental form
ut the familiar and the exotic, the nearby and
t�e rem te, the entral and the periphe
� � ral, the "modern" and the "tra­
of emb odi ed exp eri en ce -the site of a powerful fusion of se lf, sp ace, 'L­
- and time.
d ition al, th e umversal an d the
particular, the local and the global, the
emplaced and the d isplaced . D rawing on some of the same phenomenol ogical wor ks that compel
In g�neral th �n, our book is ethnograp Casey, we ourse lves continue the dialogue in separate essays explor� ng
1 hic, its primary purpose bei ng
to des cribe a�d inter pret so e of the wa the implicati ons of what "Western Apache and Ka luli people ha ve m mmd
� ys in which people encounter
places, p erceive t?em, and mvest them when they say that their lives are "like a trail" or "like a path ." In the
with significance. We seek to
move beyond fa�il� genera_lizations abou disti nct and d istant social and physical world s of Southwestern desert
t places being culturally con­
structed by describmg specific and Pa puan rai nforest, places are evok ed through po etic m eans. We fin d
ways in which places naturalize different
w ?rlds of sense. _Further, w aim to equat Apache stor ies and Kaluli son gs that hol d and unleash wisdom, that em­
� e such ethn ographic evo cati
with local theor ies of dw�lling-which ons bod y memor ies in manners of voicing, and that animate the sensuality
is not just livi ng in place but also
encompasses way s of fusmg se
tting to situation, locality to life-w of place as both lands ca p e and sou nd scap e. Ou r essays also emphasize the
We t�e seri_ ou sly the challenge to ground orld .
significance of local placenames , and how i t is that toponyms, when em­
these ethnographies closely in
the � ialogues with local voice ployed in cer tain contexts, contribute to the c reation of senses of place
_ s that animated them in the first
that is, we take seriously the challenge to re place - r ich in moral, cosmological, and biographical texture.
• . 11 rang
gister a fi:-UJ.1
si· ve �d non�iscursive modes of expressio e of ' cur-
dis
Kathleen C. Stewart's contr ibution on Appalachia deals too with the
n through which everyday and
p oetically heightened senses of place are l felt intensity of places and their complex sensuous components. But she
ocally articulated . ,v, we as ke d fcor
ess ays t hat descri· bed how spe descr ibes a d ifferent sense of place -g ritty, ed gy, troublesome - as she
cific expressive practices and perfc
·imbued act s, events, and obj. ects wit or mances
. . . h sign ificance, thus illunu· natmg travels through spaces of loss and margi nality in the "hollers" of West
fcerent ways m · which place is voic · di.f_
ed and exper ience d· In the p ro Virginia. Stewart challen ges u s to pictu re a rather close-by world made
illust ratmg· , perfcornun · g, num
. icki cess of increasin gly remote by class and power cleavages, a world where histor y
. . ng' and evoking sueh desc · ·
riptions our
aut hors d raw upon a broad ra lies inscr ib ed in mined landscapes of trash and is performed daily in hard
nge of local symbo
visu . lic maten· als-ver'b al,
. al , mu si. cal , oral, graphic and written - and present th talk and sad songs. Evoking the h erreal sp aces of poetic intensification
em thr ugh
yp

/ i a varie ty of essay writing st;

les. In doing so they loca te _ � that she hears in Appalachian voices and sees in local yards of rubbish,
strengths and fragili.ti.es that connect t he mtricate
places to soci'al im · agm · ati· on and Stewart writes against the fl atness of ethnographic realism, di spelling any
I pract i· ce, to memor y and desire' to dwe
lling and movement. eas y natu ralizatio n of place as rooted contentment, any simple natural- L-­
ization of nostalgia as romantic desire. Hers is a disturbing confrontation
 10 I STEVEN FELD AND KEITH H. BASSO
INUODUCTION I II

wi th ways in which emplacement and

displacement invol ve distractions, gation, s enses of place are "barely diminished in the mo dern world." In­
excesses, and heightene d anxieties.
Miriam Kahn begins wi th a co mmon an dee d, displace ment is no less the source of powerful attachments than are ),
d often taken-for-grante d exp er iences of p rofound rootedness. And las t, in a phrase thick enough
a�pe ct of pla ce : the sc
enario of going an d coming, the p
ubl ic exhibi­ to ser ve as this volu me 's epigraph an d bump er stick er, "no one l ives in
tlo� ?f entangling and disentangling.
Asking why the mana gement of the world in general." What could be truer of placed exp erience - s ecure
arnvmg an d leaving is
s ometimes so poignant, Kahn p roceeds to ex­ or fr a gile, pleas urable or re pu gnant, co mforti n g or unsettlin g- than the
� lore th� emotional contours situate d
in her own experiences of settling taken-for-grant ed q uality of i ts i ntens e particul arity?
mto, takmg leave of, returning to, and a
gain departing Wamira villa ge in Senses of place : the terrain covered here inclu des the relation of sen­
Papua _ New Guinea. Not s ur prisin gly,
Wamirans ha d their own compli­ sation to emplacement; the experienti al an d expressive ways places are
cate d ideas about how thes e dramatic disp
lay s s hou ld be publicly enacted.
�hn.s essay uses the autobiographical vo known, imagi ne d, yearned for, hel d, remembere d, voiced, lived, co�­
ice to articulate her engagement teste d, and s tru ggle d over; and the multiple ways places are meto nyrru­
�Ith �anuran s entimentality and s ociabili
ty, arguing for a dditional ways cally and metaphorically tied to identiti es. We begi n by asking how
I� which p eople an d pl
aces are bon de d t hrough feelingfu
tions.
l s peech and ac­ people are dwel ling and how ethnographic accounts of their mod�s of
�aren I. �lu's essay explores the histor dwelli ng might enrich our sense of why places, how ever va gue, are live d
y and ethnography of thre e out in deeply me anin gful ways.
spatially and mteractionally overlappe
d an d interlocke d communities in Forging an intellectual path of their own alongside humanistic and
ea st_e rn Nor �h Carolina. The re, in Rob
eson County, group s o f Lu mbee
Indians, Afncan Amer icans, and Whites critical p os tmodern tendencie s, thes e essays reveal that as e�pl e fas h­
all stake claims for a " home f
pla�e," fo_r group identities tied to particul ion places, s o, too, do they fashion themselves. People don t JUSt dw ell
ar tow ns an d lan dscap es. These
resilient 1dent1t1 es - and the in comfort or misery, in centers or margins, in place or out of place,
loca les to which they are atta c
he d- are more empowered or disemp owered. People everywhere act on t he i nte gr ity
than a little complex, having
been shape d by s hare d yet separate histor ies,
�neq ual acces� to economic and political po of their dwellin g. Thus, allegor ies that inform and guide the conduct o f
wer, an d different de grees of waywar d Ap aches, puzzle d songs and refigure d gender positi ons flowing
mvolvement m local, county, and national
event s. Bl u takes us up an d
aroun� the road� of a pl ace fro m waterfalls in a Papuan rainfores t, a ggravat ed lives i n the West Vir­
thick with impacts, a region
tants live deeply immerse d in pers on ificati whose inhabi­ ginia hollers, anthro pologists and locals embraci ng each other 's h?me ­
I S he revea ls how s truggles an d uproote d m
ons, ambiences, an d memor ies.
sickness in Papua New Guinea, reme mb ered fables an d he gemomc ac­
oments are endlessly coun
tered with a ctions meant to ens ure a sense ­ comodat ions in multiethnic North Caroli na, protection soci et ies and
of home.
Cha�les 0. Frake �nds the collection by m le aving the right things off of m aps in rural Eas t Angli a - all these are
,, usin g over a "trouble ­
som e tnbe --:-th � E n gl is h - and as i nstructive for geogra phies of disrupti on and contestati on a s fo r hi s­
their rural world of East
the co �ntrys1de 1s loc�y cons
Anglia, where tor ies of creativit y an d resilience. Whether they are embe dde d i n dis ­
titute d as a unique an d telli
n g q uaintness.
Frake mter prets a variety of local mater ials -fro courses of sensuous beauty or ugliness (Feld and Stewart), in di scourses
m placenames to local
pub talk, fro m _ guide books to O rdnance Surv o f morality an d theft (Basso and Blu), or i n discourses o f nos talgia and
ey maps, from county
r ecor ds to E n glish novels -to p lon gi n g (Kahn and Fra ke), stru ggles ar isin g from loss and des ires for con­
resent a complex re pres
entation of place. trol are always pla ced. O ur essays find those placements in cartographies
He concludes �1th an ethnographic readin g
of "imp rovement " that
veals how_ local ideas of res toration and planni re ­ mapped, s ung, or storied, in environments pile d high in trash or meticu­
ng are imagine d to opp
other notions of mo dernization. ose lously hedged, i n local knowledge of well-atten ded paths or roa ds m a de
In his afterwor d to the book, Cliffor d Geertz vague by havi n g no names or too many, and in the voicin gs of dee p
reflects on some issues
ou r ethnog raphi. es of place ent aphor ism, memorial poes is, heate d back talk, letters from home, s pe eches
ail. Firs t, becaus e place
·
abstract1on," exp1ormg · i. ts lo "makes a poor
cal specificities and resonances i with choke d-back tears, humorous quips, tru e-to-life fictions, and what
prove more frmtful than searching for commo s likely to
n denominators.
goes without saying.
and p aralle l t o the first, no matte S econd
r how strongly current worId c '
argue for the pnm . acy of places on d'1t1· ons
as sites of power struggles and
d"1s a ggre-
 1
How to Get from Space to Place in a fairly Short
Stretch of Time
Phenomenoloaicol Proleaomeno
ldward t Casey
All existing things are either in place or not without place.
-Archytas, as cited by Simplidus
The power of place will be remarkable.
-Aristotl,, Physics, Book IV
Space is a society of named places.
-Claud, Uvi-Strauss, The Savage Mind
Nothing could extinguish the fact and claim of estate.
- W. E. H. Stanner, "Aboriginal Territorial O,ganization"

I
t is sensible, perhaps even irresistible, to assume that human experience
begins with space and time and then proceeds to place. Are not space
and time universal in scope, and place merely particular? Can place do
anything but specify what is already the case in space and time? Or might
it be that place is something special, with its own essential structures and
modes of experience, even something universal in its own way?
These are questions I shall address in this chapter, and I will do so by
way of phenomenology. The insistently descriptive character of the phe­
nomenological enterprise in philosophy rejoins the emphasis in anthro­
pology on precise description in the field (which has never prevented
considerable speculation in the chair!). There is much more that could
be said about the convergence of anthropology and phenomenology, but
in the limitations of this essay I shall attempt only to show how phe­
nomenology as I practice it treats the question of place; anthropological
implications will be adumbrated but nowhere fully pursued.
Phenomenology began as a critique of what Husserl called the "natu­
ral attitude;' that is, what is taken for granted in a culture that has been in­
fluenced predominantly by modern science-or, more precisely, by sci­
entism and its many offshoots in materialism, naturalism, psychologism,
and so forth. (And anthropologism: in the Prolegomena to his Logical
Investigations [1970), Husserl addresses "transcendental anthropologism.")
 HOW TO GET FRON !PACE TO PLACE I I!
14 I EDWARD !. um
n" -of det erminate social
One belief endemic to the natural attitu • de concerns the way places relate j ection"-or, alternatively, of the "reproductio
system of significant places as
to w hat is . commonly called "space.,, 0nee it . .
is assum ed (after Newton actions and structures. "Country" is the
nts "a proj ection into symbolic
�d Kant) that space is absolute and infinite as well as empty and a priori specified by the Dreaming, which represe
1991:47). And the structure
m status places become the mere apportiorungs • . . compart- space of various social processes" (Myers
of space, its orphic with the landscape of
. '
m entalizati. ons. · of the Dreaming in turn-a structure isom
upi society reproduces itself
In�eed, that places are the dete rminations of an already existing th e country-is "a product of the way Pint
phrase "in space and tim e"
monolith of Space has become an artic . . so much so in space and time" (Myers 1991:48).The
1e o f sci.entif1c i faith ing medium. Having no
that two recent books m · anthropo1ogy that bear expressly on plac e-
' is telling: the reproduction is in some preexist
esumptively empty medium
.
both quite valuable works m · many regards-espous e the view that place inhe rent configurations of its own, this pr
fact of what? what fact?) by
. something
is posterior to space, even ma de f rom space. By "space is meant a
,, must be populated after the fact (but the
cularities that belong to
neutral, pre-given . i
medium, a tabula rasa onto wh.1ch the part1cu ..
. 1ant1es processes that impute to empty space the parti
ngs to space ; particularity,
0f cu1ture and history come to be mscn . place as the presumed the Dreaming. G enerality, albeit empty, belo
· ·be d, with n m eet only by an appeal to
resu1t.,n we find this view, · c
ror example, m . Jam
,
es F. Weine r s richly sugges-
albeit mythic, belongs to place; and the twai
ex post facto.
. .
tive ethnography of the F01 of Papua N ew Guinea, The Empty Place: "A a procedure of superimposition that is invoked
, as Myers himself avers:
. ,s place . , But the Pintupi themselves think otherwise
society names schemat1c ally r.mage a people s intentional trans- iple features is logically
c
rormat1on . of their
hab.Itat from a sh eer ph ys1cal terram . .
. mto a pattern "To the Pintupi, then, a place itself with its mult
we to b elieve? The theo­
of histone . ally expenenc · ed and constitut prior or central" (Myers 1991 :59). W hom are
. ed space and time... The be- ral attitude bristling with
stowm . g of plac
e names constitutes F01. exist . . rizing anthropologist, the arsenal of his natu
. . ential space out of a blank
explanato r y proj ectiles that go off
into space? Or the aborigine on the
.
environme nt" (Weiner 1991:32). coherent collocation of pre­
The idea of transfermat.ion from a "sheer physical . ,, and the ground who finds this ground itself to be a
. terram e and in the Dreaming
.
mak.ing of "��istenti.al space" -which is to say, place-out of a "blank given places-pre-given at once in his experienc
logist, Space comes first;
.
environment entails that to begm . wit . h there is some empty and inno- that sanctions this experienc e? For the anthropo
no means trivial.
cent spat1a . l spread • waitmg, · · .
as it were, for cultural configurations to for the native, Place; and the difference is by
between the anthro­
�e?der it . pIaceful.But when does this "to begin with" exist? And where It is not, of course, simply a matter of choosing
es- as if the Pintupi had
1s it !ocate d;, Answ ers t0 both questions .
wi.11 gene rate a vicious regress of pologist's vantage point and that of the nativ
parat iv primacy of space
chosen to participate in a debate on the com
e
the k.md at sta · ke m . Kant's fi.rst antmomy: to search for a first mom ent in
. own expr ss concern. As an
. versus place.Nor is any such primacy Mye rs's
e
either time or space is · to mcur
· shipwreck on the shoals of Pure Reason.1 e for spac e over against
0 r consi.der the followmg · c1 aim • firom Fred R.Myers, s oth erwis e re- anthropologist in the field, his task is not to argu lace means
what being -in-p
markable ethnography of desert ab ongm . . al people of Centr al Australia place but to set forth as accurately as possible a cul­
. v n wh n tr ating
to the Pintupi.Just there , however, is the rub: e e e e
Pi.ntup1. Country Pintuipi Self: "The process by which spac e becomes 'coun-
, , th anthr opolo gist leans
. ture for which place is manifestly paramount
e
try, by wh.ich'a story gets attached to an ob�ect, .1s part of the Pintupi plac and that (by an im­
ha bi.t of mm .
• d that looks behind Ob� ects to events and see s in obi ects a on a concept that obscures what is peculiar to e
· . J arin ss Th anthr opolo gist's
plicit cultural fiat) even implies its second .
e e
sign of somethmg els
. ,, e"_ (Myers 1991 :67).Here we are led to ask, W hat urs -in which the priority of space ov er place is
virtu­
are these "ob�ects behmd which events 1urk and to which . ston. es get theor e tical disco e
attached;,. The neutral.ity 0f the term O b· comm itm nt.
ally axiomatic-runs athwart his descriptiv e e
')ect suggests that the first-order
lieve-both anthro­
i·tems m · the uruv . erse are
denuded thmgs-d .
enuded of the very "sec- The question is not so much whom we are to be
ondar ualities" . he demea _ ng term f Galilean-Cartesian-Lockian h-b ut what we are to believe.
ru ? pologist and natives are trustworthy enoug
discm:r!) that w��1 _ma�e them fit subj ects of events and stories. W e starts from a mute and blank
Are we to believe that human experience
as "near ," "ov r there," "along
wonde r, fiurther w hat 1s this "process bY which space becomes 'country', " "space" to which placial modifiers such
e
. "cultur ,, r or later: pr sumably sooner
by w h.ich space 'is that way," and "just here" are added, soon e e
alized , and by wh.ich ".impersonal geography"
b ecomes "� home, a ngurra (Myers 1991 :54).2 ,, ar we to b li v that the world
in p erc eption and later in culture? Or e e e e

Myers mt1mates that all sue h transrorma runs, rills, and flats, in fele
c t1ons are a matter of the "pro- comes configured in odd protuberances, in
16 I EDWUD I. mn
KOW TO GET F�OH SPACE TO PUCE I 17

and do :m, as the Kaluli might put

_ it (Feld, this volume)-all of which loc uti on, "presents locally to l ocals a local turn of mind" f1983:}2)­
;!1"e trait s of pla es? (Ironically, in th
� is vi ew flatness and, m ore generally, precedes knowledge of space? C ould place be general_ and s�ace p�­
featurelessness belong to place to
begin wi th.) tic ular? Phenom enol ogy not only moves us to ask these rmpertment anti­
_ I t�ke the second view as just stated to be both more accurate as a de­ Enlightenment questions but also provides reas ons for believing that the
scnpt�on and more valuable as a heur
istic in the understanding of place. answers t o them ar e affi rm ative.
In domg so, I join not only the Pin
tupi and the Kal uli b ut also certain In a phenom enological account, the crux in matters of place is the
e arly �d late figures in Western thou
ght . Both Archytas and Aristotle role of perception. Is it the case, as Kant believes (along with �ost m?d­
Proclaime d that P1ace is· pn· or
. to sp ace, and, more rec ently, Bachelard ern epistemologist s), that percep tion p rovides those bare startmg-p omts
and Heidegger have reembraced the
_ conviction. All fo ur thinkers sub­ called variousl y "sensa tions;' "sense data," "impressions," and so for th? O r
scr ib e to what could be called the
Arc hytian Axiom: "Place is the first is something else at work in pe rcepti on that conveys m ore about place_
0 f all_ thi ngs." 3 In bet ween
the ancients and the postmoderns there was than mere sensory signals can ever effec t? It is certainly true-and this
a penod of p reoccupat
ion with space - as well as with time conceived is what Kant emphasizes in the idea of "beginning with" - that sensory
of _as sp ace 's cosmic par
tner. But how m ay we r
ority ? f P ce by m ans
etr i eve a sens: of the p r i­ inputs are the occasions of the perception (eventually the knowledge) of
�� � other than arguing from a uthority (a s I have just concrete places. These impingements-as connoted in the term Empfin­
don� m citing certam congenial W es
tern th inkers) or arguing agains t au­ dungen, Kant's wor d fo r "sensations"-alert us to the _ fact that �e are
� hority (�s occ urs when moder n science is pilloried, which Husserl does perceiving, and they convey cer tain of the very q u�ties (mclu� �h e
m attackmg the natural attitude)?
secondar y qualities) of the s urfaces of wh at we perceive. But their pom­
My suggestion is t?at we can retri
eve su ch a sense by c onsider ing tillistic charac ter ill equips them for supplying anything like th e sense
what a phen?menol gical approach
� to place migh t tell us. Even if s uch of being in a place. Yet we do always fmd ourselves in places. W e find
an ap� roach 1s not without its own prej
u dicial commi tm ent s and ethno­ ourselves in them, however different the places th emselves may b e a nd
ce�tri� stances, it is an appro ach that
, in its devo tion to concrete de­ however differently we construe and exploit them. But h ow do we gr asp
scription, �as he advantage of honori
� ng the actual experience of those this in of being in a p artic ular place : this preposition which is literally a
who p rac tice it. In this regard it rejoins
not only the anthrop ologist in "pre -position" inasmuch as we are always already in a place, never not
th fiel d b t the native on
� � the land: both have no c
hoice but to begin empla ced in one way or another?
5
with experience. As Kant insisted, " th
ere can be no doubt th at all
knowle dge begins ith_ experience " (195 our If perception is "primary" (as both Husserl and Merleau-Ponty m­
� 0 [1787]: Bl). sist), then a significant p ar t of its p rimariness m ust be its ability to gi�e
�or K�nt, to be§,n with means to be instigated by. Thus he mu
qualificati on that th ugh all our knowl st add the to us more than bits of information about the ph enomenal and epi­
� edge begins wi th e xper i
d oes n ot follow that it all anses out of e_ ence, it phenomenal surfaces of things-and more, too, than a convic tion that
xperience" (Kant 1950 [1787]: we are merely in the p resence of these surfaces. Beyond what Husserl
Bl). Knowled e of any rigorous sort do
� es not derive from experi
ence. calls the "hylet ic" factor, and Merlea u-Ponty, "sensing," there must be_, as
�nt makes this perfectly clear � his Anthropologyfrom a Pragmatic Poin
;''ew, arguably the first theoretical treatise on
anthropology in the Wes
t of an ingredient in perception from the start, a conveyance of what bemg
General knowle dge must always precede t: in places is all about. Merleau-Ponty considers this conveyance to be
local knowledge - . . [because]
wi· tho ut [ gene al knowledge], all cquir d depth-a "primordial depth" that, fa r from being imputed to sensations
� knowle dge can only be a frag-
m entar y experiment and not a sci� ence.;4 (as Berkeley (1934], for example, had held), already si tuates them in a
This paradigmatic Enligh ten-
m ent statement sets the stage -indeed • still scene of which we o urselves fo rm p art . Husserl's way of p utting it is
. holds the stage m · many ways
- fcor th e idea that space precedes place· Spa th at "every exp erience has its own horizon" a nd th at we continu ally find
. . . . ce, being the most pervasive
o f cosrruc me dia, is considered
that about which we must have ourselves in th e midst of perceptual horizons, both the "internal" hori­
k now1edge, whereas we possess merely loca general zons of p articular things (i. e., their immediate ci rcumambi enc e) and the
. . l knowledge about p1ace
But what if things are the other way ar "exter nal" ho rizons that encompass a given scene as a whole.6
- . o und?· W hat i·f the ver y
of spa ce is p oster ior to tha t of i:dea But precisel y as surrounded by depths and horizons, the perceiver
place• perhaps even denv · e d firom it?·
W h at if local knowledge -which in Geert ' finds herself in the midst of an entire teeming pla ce-world rather than in
' z s appropna· te1Y p1eona .
stic a confusing kaleidoscope of free -float ing senso ry data. The coherence of
 HDW TO GET FRO" SPACE TO PLACE I 19
18 I EDWARD S. CASE!

tural p rac tices and social ins titutions. On the contrar y: these practices
p erception at the primary level is supplied by the depth and horizons of
and ins titutions per vade every level of pe rception, from the quite im­
the very place we occupy as sentient subjects. Th at is why we c an trus t this
plicit (e.g., tacitly g rasped ou ter horizons) to the extremely explicit (e.g.,
coherence :"ith wha,� S antayana (1955) called "animal faith," and Husserl
the them atic thing perceived). The perme ation occurs even-indeed,
(1982: sec�10n _103), primal belief (protodoxa)." We come to the world­
especially-when a given percep tion is preconc ep tual and prediscurs ive.
w e come mto It and keep returning to it-as already placed there. P laces
To be not y et ar ticulated ID concep t o r word is not to be noncultur ally
e not add�d to sensations any mor e than th ey are impos e d on spaces.
;oth sens ations and sp cons titute d, much less free from social cons traints. Hence, the pr imacy
aces are themselves emplaced from th e very first
of perception does not entail the pr iority of perception to the g ivens of
moment, and at every subs equent moment as w ell.
cultur e or society, as if the latter were s eparable contents of ou r being
There i� no knowing or sensing a place except by being in that place,
and experience: the se g ivens become infusions IDto the infrastr uc tures
and to be m a place is to b e in a pos ition to perceive it. Knowledge
of p erception itself. The primacy of pe rception is ultimately a pr imacy
of place is not then, subsequent to p erception- as Kant dogmatical ly
'.

�ssumed-but 1s mgredient in perception its elf. Such knowledge, genu­ of the lived body- a body that, as we shall see in more detail later, is a
cre ature of habitual cu ltural and social processes.
�-ely local knowledge, is its elf exp eriential in the manner of Erlebnis,
lived exp_en· enc e,_" rather than o f E vf.
But perception remains as constitutive as it is constituted. This is espe­
a hn.mg, the alre ady elapsed exper i-
'J
ence that Is the object of analyt ical o r abs trac t knowledge. (Kant, signifi­
c ially ev ident when we perce ive p laces: our immersion in them is not
cantly spea�s _o1:1y of Eifahrung.) Local know ledge is at one with lived subj ection to them, s ince we may modify th eir influence even as we sub­
'.
exp_ e nenc e if I t 1_s mdeed true that this know ledge is of the locali ties in
mit to it. This IDfluence is as m ean ingful as it is sensuous. Not only is
the sensuous sens eful, it is also place ful. As Fel d (this volume) put s it,
- whICh the knowmg subj ect lives. To live is to live locally, and to know is
first of all to know the places one is in. "as place is sense d, senses are placed; as p laces make sense, senses m ake
I_ am �ot proposing a mere ly mute level of experience that p assively place." The dialec tic of perception and place (and of both with meaning)
rec eives srmple �d senseless data of place. Perception at the primary is as intr ic ate as it is profound, a nd it is never- ending.
le vel Is s�es th et1c-an affair of the whole body sensing and mov ing.
Given that w e are never without perception, the existence of t his dia­
!hanks to its inherent complexity, bodily perceiving is directed at (and lectic means that we are never without emplace d exper iences. It signifies
as well that we are not only in places bu t of them. Human be ings-along
IS ade�uate to) things and places that come configured, often in highly
complicated ways. Moreov er, the configuration and complication are with other entities on ear th-are ine luctably place-bound. More even
than earthlings, we are placelings, and ou r very pe rcep tual apparatus, our
a�eady meaningful and not som ething inter nally r egis tered as sensor y
g ivens that lack any sense of their own: the sensory is senseful. Nor sens ing body, refl ec ts the kinds of places we inhabit. The ongoing reli­
do�s t he mheren� meaningfulness of what we perceive require the in­ ability and general veracity of percep tion (a relia bility and veracity that

fusrnn of �etermmate concepts locat ed higher up the epistemic ladder. countena nce considera ble exper iential vic issitudes) entail a continual at­
The perce!ved po�sesses a core of immanent sense, a "noematic nucleus" tunem ent to place (also exp er ienced in open-ended var iation). But if

�n Husserl s techmcal term (1982: section 91). Because this senseful core this is true, it sugges ts that place, ra ther th an being a mere product or
is ac tively grasped, it foll�ws �?at ?erception is never entirely a matter portion of space, is as primary as the p erception that gives access to it.
" Also suggested is the heretical-and quite ancient-thought that place,
of what Kant calls_· rec_ept1v1ty, as if the perceiving subj ect were mere ly
passive. Not o�y 1s pnma�y _ perc�pti�n inseparable from my riad modes far from being something simply singular, is something ge neral, perhaps
of co cre e a_ c_t1on, but 1t 1s 1t�elf a kmd of passivity in activity" (Husserl even univ ersal: a thought to which we shall return.
� �
.108, his italics). To perceive synesthetically is to be active ly passive ·
!9?3

I
It is to_ b e absorptive yet constitutive, both at once.
It 1s also to be constituted: cons titute d by cultural and social struc­ Nature makes itself specific.
-Kant, The Critique ofJudgment
tures that sed iment themselves into the deepest level of perception The
e ID
p rimacy of perception does not mean that hum an sensing and m�ving It is charac teristic of the modern Wes tern mind to conceiv e of spac
are p�e cultur al or presoc1a l. No more than perception is bu ss nce-h nc h insis nt s rch fo m th e m ati­
terms of its formal e e e e t e te ea r a
ilt up firom
· - . pur sp ti l r la ons. Fo N w on, Mo , G ss e ndi,
a tOffilc sensat ions 1s 1t const ructed from brute givens unaffe cal expressions of e a a e ti r e t re a
cted by cul-
.. ··�!fl'
;"1r,:; �r- •� • ,• •-' l"fr{' ,,., ' • ,•
-
• , • ••'-•"'

20 I EDWAlD I. um HOW TO GET FRON SPACE TO PLACE I 21

�esc�rtes, and Galileo, space was homogeneous, isotropic, isometric, and

�rutely (or, at least, indefinitely) extended. Within the supremely in­
different and formal scene of space, local differences did not matter.
I Do we not sense from the outset a certain difference, by virtue of which
locality belongs to me somewhat more essenti�lly [tha� for example, size an_d
weight]? ... Men and animals are spatially localized; and even what 1s
psychic about them, at least in virtue of its essential foundedness m what
Place itself did not matter. It was not for nothing that Descartes pro­ is bodily, partakes of the spatial order.
po_sed in hi� Principles of Philosophy that matter and space were the same - Husserl, Ideas Pertaining co a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenolog1cal
thmg-which meant that space had no qualities not present in matter, Philosophy, Second Book; his italics
whose own primary property was a metrically determinable pure ex­ How, then, do we get back into place? In the very way by which we
tension. Place was simply a creature of such extension, either its mere are always already there -by our own lived body. Ironically, Kant was the
s �bd�vi�io� ("ir_it_er �� iace� or volume) or a relationally specified loca­ first Western thinker to point to the importance of bodily structure for
tion m it ( pos1t1on ). In his Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, emplacement. In his remarkable precr�tical essay o� 1768, "?n the First
Newton still recognized "absolute" an d "relative" places, but both kinds Ground of the Distinction of Material Reg10ns m Space, he argued
of places were only "portions" of absolute space, which was where all that the two-sidedness-especially the two-handedness-of the human
the action (e.g., gravitational action) was to be found. On the basis of body was essential for orientation in "cosmic regions" of surrounding
absolute space, places were apportione d and mapped out: just there is sky or earth:
the conceptual root of the paralogism I detect in certain recent anthro­
pological treatments of place and space. Even our judgments about the cosmic regions are subordina�ed to the con­
In this early modern paradigm shift, there was little space for place as cept we have of regions in general, insofar as they are deterrnmed m relation
to the sides of the body....However well I know the order of t�e car­
a valid concept in its own right. As a result, place was disempowered: all dinal points, I can determine regions according to that order only msofar
the power now reside d in space-and in time, the second colossal con­ as I know towards which hand this order proceeds .... S1rrularly, our geo­
cern of modern thought. Although time was hel d to have direction, it graphical knowledge, and even our commonest knowledge of the posi�ion of
was a� essentially devoid of content as was space. A century after Newton places, would be of no aid to us if we could not, by reference to the sides of
described space and time as "God's infinite sensoria," Kant consi dere d
our bodies, assign to regions the things so ordered and the whole system of
mutually relative positions. (Kant 1928 [1768]: 22-23) 9
them to be "pure forms of intuition" locate d within the finite human
subject. By_ this act of internalization, Kant sealed the fate of place even The bilateral body is singled out, then, just when it is a ques�ion of
more _ d rastic�y: at most, the human subject had "position" in the space orientation in regions ( Gegenden), where places are concatenate? m for­
and time of its own making. But place was of almost no concern in the mations that resist the ascription of pinpointed location. Could 1t be that
Critique of Pure Reason. 8 the bo dy is essentially, and not just contingently, involved in matters of
One way to avoid the high road of modernism as it stretches from emplacement? _ _
_ _ .
the abst�act physics of Newton to the critical philosophy of Kant and Kant's prescient observations about the body m its basic bilaterality
beyond 1s to reoccupy the low land of place. For place can be considered anticipated and complemented Robert Hertz's brilliant speculations on
either premodern or postmodern; it serves to connect these two far sides the cultural significance of right- versus left-handedness (Hertz 1973
of modernity. To reinstate place in the wake of its demise in modern [1909]: 3-31) Both Kant and Hertz subscribed, tacitly if not explicitly, to
Weste�n thought-where space and time have held such triumphant and a more general principle: that the human body's brachiated and multiply
exclusive sway-one can equally well go to the premodern moments de­ articulated structure renders it a uniquely valuable vehicle in the estab­
scribed in ethnographic _accou�ts of traditional societies or to the post­ lishment of place. Precisely by allowing us to make a diverse entry into a
modern mome�t of the mcre�smgly nontra ditional present, where place given place-through hands and feet, knees and hips, elb ows and shoul­
h� been returrung as a remv1gorated revenant in the writings of ecolo­ ders-the body insinuates itself subtly and multiply into encompassing
g1st_s �nd la�dscape theorists, �eog�aphers and historians, sociologists and regions. If the body were an inert and intact thing with no moving
political thinkers-and now, m this volume, anthropologists. parts, a fleshly monolith, it could be graspe d as something sheerly physi­
cal that is punctually located at a given position in space and does not
reach out farther. This is how Galileo construe d all bo dies: as inert, non­
self-moving entities submitting to the laws of gravitation and motion.
l2 I EDWUD S. CASE! HOW TO GET FlOK SPACE TO PLACE I ll

14
B ut on ce a Korper (body as physical obj ect) has b eco me a Leib (body as nificant variations, ranging from bi-gendered to bi-located bodies. And
lived)-on ce there is resurrection in th e body, as
it were-m ore than fifth, the porosity of the skin of an organic body rejoins, even as it mim­
m er�ly punctiform positioni ng in empty space (and at an equally stig­ ics, the openness of the boundaries of places; there is a fl eshlike, pneu­
15
mat ic moment in time) is at stake. This is what
Kant discovered-and matic structure sha red in a common "fles h of the world." Were the body
t h en quickly forgot. It is also what Hu sserl and H a windowless m onad, it could neither n egotiate th e
varieties no r grasp
er tz redis covered a cen­
tur y and a half later. the vale n ces of the p lac es in whi c h it fo und itse lf. And these same places
The several members of a lived body move not randomly but by what h ave to h ave th eir own windows if the body is to enter them in turn.
� e rleau -Ponty calls "cor poreal intentionality." Thanks to this intention­ In addition to t hese five fac tors, we n eed to recognize the crucial
ality, t he lived body integrates itself wit h it s immediate en vironment interaction between body, plac e, and motion. A given
place m ay cer­
tainly be perdur ing and consisten t , but this does
not mean th at it is
:�at is �o say, it s concrete place. The integration is effected by variou�
mtent10nal threads" that bind body and p lace in a common complex simply something inactive and at rest-as is all too oft en assumed. Part
of relations.10 But none of this pervasive integumentation between body of the power of place, its very dynamism , is found in it s encouragement
and p lace w uld be possible without the
? freel y moving members of t h e of motion in its midst, its " e -motive " (and often explicitly emotional)
body as it situates itself in a particular place , remembers itself in t hat th rust. Indeed, we may distinguish among t h ree kinds of
bodily motion
place and so forth. !he lived body-t h e body living (in) a pla ce-is
: p ertin ent to place. The fi rst and most limited case is staying in place.
thus the natural subject of perception" (Merleau-Ponty 1962 :208). The
_ Here the body remains in place, in one single place. Yet such a body in
�xperience of perceiving that I disc ussed earlier requires a cor poreal sub­ such a situation is n ever entirely stationary except in extreme circum­
j ect who lives 1 a place through perception. It also requires a place that is
�
stances of paralysis or rigor mor tis. Even when staying in place, the body
ame nable to this body-subj ect and that
extends its own influen ce back changes the position of some of its parts, however modestly: mov ing
ont� this_su�j ect. A place, we might even say, has its own "operative in­ its limbs, rotating its h ead, twiddling its t humbs. The body twitches in
_
tent10nal�� that �hcits and responds to t he corporeal intentionality of place. Mo reover, an unmoving body may still move if it is transported by
th� p erceiv mg subj ect. Thus place integrates with body as much as body another moving body: th e d river of a car, the rider on horse
back. Toyn­
16
with place. It is a matter of what Basso calls "interanimation." 11 bee remarks that Bedouins riding on ho rses " move by not mov ing."
Other aspect s of the lived body are at stake in being-in-place each We might say that the body of the Bedouin stays in one position, yet the
of th�m speci�ying further what first caught Kant 's keen eye. First: vari­ locus of this position -where " locus" signifies a position in its capacity
ous kinesthesias and synesthesias-as well as sonest hesias, as Feld insists to change pla ces in space-it self changes as the mount moves between
m this volume-allow bodily self-motion to be regis · tered and enr iched different places. 17
. ·
ulti mately constituting what Husserl
terms the "aesthesiological body': The second case, moving within a place, is the circumstan ce in which
This body itself serves as a "field of l ocalization" for the manifold sen·­ I move my whole body about a given place while still remaining in it.
suous presentations (including sonorous ones) that stem from a p articu Insofar as I am typing t his manuscript, I am in one position; but when I
­
�ar place bu\;re registered by (or with) a lived body that fmds itself get up to pace, I move around in the room I am in. I move within a cir­
m that place. Second, _immanent bodi ly dimensionalities of le body
. up/down, cumscribed "spac e" defined by the walls of the room. The who
front/ back, right/ left-explicitly recognized by Kant, who w tak en by
as in clined, moves in the whole roo m . Si mila rly, much ceremonial action is
however, to reduce them to t he three Cartesian coordinate
s-help to bodies moving in set ways within entire presc ribed places: kivas, lazas, p
conne t body with th e placial settings
� of these same three dyads.° longhouses, tem ples.
Thi rd, the conc reteness of a lived body, its density and m
ass, answers Finally, moving between places denotes th e circumstance in which bodies
to the thick conc reteness of a given place, but t he difference b
etween the travel between different places. No longer is movement cir cumscr ibed by
two c�?creuons is _jUst as critical because it sets up a " coeffi
_ cient of ad­ the restrictions of a single position or one place ; now it ranges among a
versity (Sar_ tre 1?65 :590) that makes ordinar y perception itsel
Fou r th, a given lived body and a given experienced place
f possible. number of plac es. In this case, the motion is a genuin e transition and not
themselves as p_articu�a :_ as j ust his body in j ust this place.
tend to present just a transportation.18 The most salient instance is the journey, and cases
r � Each t hus ac­ in point are emigrations, pilgr i mages, voyages of exchange, and no madic
tively partakes m the this-here, -which does not , however,
exclude sig- circulations. In all of th ese, the bodies of the journeyers follow m o re o
r
 . ' ..
,,"I, ,�.)..:t'•�� .,,; .
�-·
...
.. .... .....�'
�� ""' .. '-
',. �·-��·�;

KOW TO GET F�ON IPACE TO PLACE I ll

14 I EDWA�D I. CA!E!

"proj ection" or "rep roduction" -not even these subjects as they draw
preordained routes between particular places: for example, the pil­
les s_
upon their b odily and pe rceptual powers. The p ower belongs to place
g rimage route to Santiago de C ompostela as it connects various interim itself, and it is a power of g athering.
places throug�out western Europe. The b ody's active role is most evi­ By "gathering" I do not mean merely am assing. To gather placewise
_
dent m the literal legwork of circ umambulati ons and other forms of is to have a peculiar hold on what is presented (as well as represente d) in
peregrination, but it is no less present in the building of homes teads in a given place. No t just the co ntents b ut th e very mo de o f containment
the land of emigration or in the setting u p o f temporary nomadic en­ is held by a place. "The hold is held." 19 The hold o f place, its g ather­
campments. Just as staying in place cor res po nd s to position, and moving ing action, is hel d in quite special way s. Fi rst, it is a holding together in a
the whole body within one l ocus ans wers to place pro per, so moving be­ particular configurati on: hence our sense of an ordere d arrangement o f
tween places corresponds to an entire region, that is, an area concat enated things in a place even when those thing s are ra dically disparate and quite
by peregrinati ons between the places it connects. conflictual. The arrangement allo ws for certain things -people, ideas,
T�ere is much more to be said abo ut th e role of the body in place, and so forth-to overlap with, a nd s ometimes to occlude, o thers as they
especially about how places active ly soli cit b odily moti ons. At th e very
recede or come for ward together. S econd, the hold is a hol ding in and
least, we ca n agree that the living-m oving b o dy is essential to the process
a hol ding out. It retains the occ upants o f a place within its b ounda ries :
o f empla cement: lived bodies be long to p laces and hel p to co nstitute them.
if they were utterly to vanish and the plac e to be permanently empty, it
Even if such bo dies may be displa ced in certain respects, they are never would be no place at all but a v oid. But, equally, a place hol ds out, beck­
placeless ; they are never only at discrete positions in world time or space, oning to its inhabitant s and, ass embling them, making them ma nifest
though they may also be at such positio ns. By the same token, however, (though not necessarily manifest to each o ther, or to the same deg ree).
!!laces belong to lived bodies and depend on them. If it is true that "the b o dy It can move place-hol ders towar d the margins of its own presentati on
�s our general medium for having a world" (Merleau-Ponty 1962:146), while, nevertheless, holding them within its own ambiance.
It ensues that _ the body 1s the s pecific medium for experiencing a place­
Third, the holding at issue in the gathering of a place re fl ects the lay­
world. The lived body is the mater ial condition of possibility for the
out of the local landscap e, it s c ontinuous contour, even as the out lines
place-world while being itself a memb er of that same world. It is basic
and inlines of the thing s held in that pla ce a re respecte d. The resul t is no t
to place a�d part of place. Just as there are no places without the bo dies
0 confusion of container with containe d but a literal configuration in which
that susta m and vivify them, so there are no lived bo dies without the
the form of the place -for exa mple, "mountain;• "mesa," "gulley" -j oins
p�aces they �abit and traverse. (Even ima ginary places bring with them
up with the sha pes of the thing s in it. Being in a pla ce is b e ing in a
virtual bo dies - "subtle bodi es" in an ea rlier nomenclature.) Bodies and
places are connatural terms. They interanimate each other. configurative complex o f things. Fou rth, intrinsic to the hol ding o pera­
tion of place is keeping. What is kept in place primarily are experiencing

I
b odies regarded as privilege d residents rather than as orchestrating forces
We may suggest that the day will come when we will not shun the ques­
(much less as mere registrants). My body-in-place is less the metteur en
tion whethe r the opening, the fi:ee open, may not be that within which
alone pure space and ecstatic time and everything present and absent in scene than itself mise en scene-or rather, it is both at once, "passivity in
them have the place which gathers and protects everything. activity" (Husserl 1973).
- Heidegger, "The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking" And last, places also keep such unbo dy like entities as thoughts and
Places gather: this I take to be a second ess ential trait (i.e., beyond the role memories. When I revisit my hometown of Tope ka , Ka nsas, I find this
_ place more or less secur ely hol ding memories for me. In my pre�ence,
of the lived body) rev�ale � by a phenomen ological topoanaly sis. Mini­
mally, �laces gath�r things m their _ it releases these memories, which belong as much to the place as to my
midst-where "things" connote vari­
ous arumate and manimate entities. P laces also gather experiences and brain or b ody. This kind o f keeping is esp ecially pertinent to an intensely
histor ies, even languages and thoughts. Think ofily of what it means to gathered la ndscape such as that of aboriginal Australia -a landscape that
go b ack to � place you know, fmding it full of memories and expecta­ hol ds ancestral mem or ies o f the Drea ming. Ye t even when I recall peo pl e
_
tio ns, old th mgs and new things, the familiar and the strange, and much and things a nd circ umsta nces in a n or dinary place, I have the sense that
more bes·d i es. What eIse ·is capable of this massively diversi·fiie d hoId·mg these various recollecta have been kept securely in place, harbore d there,
. . .
action.
. 'Certai'nly not mdividual human subj ects construed as sourc es of a s it were.
20
�- --:-----------�----...,,,........................ _______
HOW TO GET FROH SPACE TO PLACE I 27
26 I EDWARD I. CASEY

more a type or a style than a pure concept o r formal universal. While suc h
Gathe�ing �ives to place its peculiar perduringn ess, all owing us to a concept or u niversal is fixed in definition (if not always in application),
r turn t o it !ram a nd a gain as the same place and not j ust as th e sa me posi­
� _ a type or style connotes an open manifoldness, a unity-in-diversity, and
tion or sit e For a place, m its dynamism, do es not age in a syst emati­ not a self-identical unity. Further, a type or style a dmits of degrees­
:
cally changmg way, that is, in accordanc e with a preesta blish ed sch edule
so sensitively that a change o f a few degrees may bring with it a change
o f growth and declin e; only its tenants and visitors enactors and wit­
in identity, as when analytical Cubism g ave way imperceptibly but sud­
n ess s (in cluding myself and others in th ese va rious ;oles ) age and grow
� denly to synthetic Cubism.
old m this way. A place is generative and regenerat ive on its own sched­ In the case of place, then, the kind is itself kind of something, rather
ule. F om it experiences are born and to it human beings ( and other
� than a defi nit e sor t o f something. This is w hy we spea k o f places in
o rganis ms) retu rn for empowerment, much like Anta eus touching the
phrases like "a clean well-lit place," "a place for recovering one's sanity;'
e arth for renewed strength. Place is the generatri.x for the collect ion, as "a Southwestern landscape," or "a Southern plantation." The indefinite
well as th e recollection, of all that occur s in the lives of sentient beings, article employed in these locutions bespe a ks the indefiniteness o f the
and even for the trajecto ries of in animat e things. Its power consists in
_ _ kind of thing a plac e or region is. Such indefini teness-not to be con­
gath ermg these hves and thmgs, each with its own space and time, into fused with indeterminacy, much less with c haos-is in no way incom­
on e arena of common engagement .
patible with the ostensive definiteness o f demonstrative pronouns and
adverbial locatives, t hat is, those "essentially occasion al expressions" that

I
are so frequently used to refer to p a rticu lar places or regions : "j ust here,"
Husserl's essences are destined to bring back all th e living relationships
_ "in this place," and so forth. I would even say that the open-endedness of
of experienc e , as the fisherman's net draws up from the depths of the
ocean quivering fish and seaweed. place, its typological status as morphologic ally vague, its de-finition, cre­
- Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception ates the semantic sp ace within w hic h definite demonstrati ons and exact
localizations can arise. 22
It should be clear by now that I do not take place to be something simply
Rather than being one definite sort of thing-for example, physical,
physical . A place is not a mere patch of ground, a bare stretch of earth , a
spiritual, c ultural, social-a given plac e ta kes on the qualities of its occu­
sedentary set of stones. What kind of thing is it then? The"what is" locu­
pants, reflecting these qualities in its own constitution and description
ti on
--: Aristotle's ti esti question - combined with"k ind of " suggests that and expressing them in its occurre nce a s an event : plac es not only are,
there is some smgle o �t �f thi ng that place is, some arch etype of Place.
� they happen. (And it is because they ha ppen that they len d themse lves so
B ut whatever place is, it is not the kind of thing that can be subsumed
well to narration, whether as histor y o r as stor y.) Just as a particular place
u nder already give� universal notions-for example, of space and time,
s ubstanc e or caus ality. A given place may not permit, indeed it often de­
is at least several kinds of things, so there are many sorts of places and
not one basic kind only- one supposedly s upreme genus. Sorts of places
fie s, su�sumption �nder given categories. Instead, a plac e is something
for whic h we contmu ally have to discover or invent new forms of under­ depend on the kin ds of things, as well a s the actual things, that m ake
standing, n e� concepts in the literal sense of ways of"grasping-together." them up. A biochore or b iotope directly reflec ts the c haracter of its con­
stituents, that is, its soils a nd fl or a an d fauna ; an agora is qualified by the
A place 1s more an event than a thing to be assimilated to known
catego ries. As an event, it is unique, idiolocal. Its pec uli arit y ca ll s not
people who pass through it or linger there; a dwelling is characterized
for assumpt10n mto the already known- that way lies site, which lends less by its architectur e than by the quality of the life that is sustained in
it. If, as Wallac e Stevens put it, "a mythology reflects its region", then
�tself_ to �redefined _
predications, uses, and interpretations -but for the
rmagmat1ve constitut10n of terms respecting its idiolocality (these range a region reflects both w hat is held toge ther there (its "contents," its co­

fro m placena mes to whole discourses). The "kind" at stake in"kind of " is tenants) and how it is so held.
n ei ther a genus no r a species, that is, a de terminate concept tha t ruIes over A place or reg ion is metaphysic ally neutral inasmuch as it do es not
. . possess some given substrate, a "ground" that wou ld be metaphysically
its mstance s, but something operating across margins, laterally, by means
. . . definite enough to determine the place or reg ion as j ust one kind of
o f h omo1ogy or smu1.1tude. Yet place q ua kmd remains something spe
. .
cifiic m. asmu ch as 1t a lters m keepi ng with its own changm·g constituents. entity. And if there is no such preexisting ground, then the mode l of
. .
The kind m questi. on, the answer pertinent to the "what is"· question · , is · adding successive strata o f meaning ( a dded by cultures or minds, ac tions
 ' .................. !'� :� ·,i, ..
,,.1'¥\(11(.t,�' .
'"""��(.-
""flffi' 't<
. .. --
. � ,. ' \

18 I EDWARD !. um
HOW 10 GET FROH SPACE 10 PLACE I 19

or word s) is of dubious application.23 Even to call such a putative g round contrast, sp ecify the abstract conditions of possibility for the per v:15iv
"th� e arth" is alre ady to region alize, or r ather to geologize, at the most _ e
str uctures of any and ev er y n atural l anguage: for example, the condit10n
basic level . T he fact is that there is not any "most basic level " to be pre­ that proper n ames must design ate obj ects that are s patiotemporally �on ­
su ed as simpl y t here, " einfa ch da," as Husserl says of objects that are
� t iguous or that color words have to divide up the color spectrum mto
posit ed by the positivism of the natur al attitude (Husserl 1982: section
continuous par t s with no gaps (see Chomsky 1965 :27-30).
27). Stripping away cultural or linguist ic accre tions, we shall never find a
The choice here proffered by Chomsky is pertinent to pl ace, but only
pure pl ace lying und erne ath -and still less an ev en purer Space or Time. by dint of calling the choice itself into question. On the one hand, place
Wh at we will fi nd are continuous and ch anging qualifications of particu­
is some thi ng like a formal univers al in th at it functions like a gener al
lar places: places qualified by their own contents, a nd qualifi ed as well by
feature, ev en a condition of possibility, of all huma n (and doubtless all
the va rious way s these content s are a rticulated (d enot ed, describ ed, dis­
animal and pl an t) expe ri ence -however expansive the term "experience"
cussed, narrat ed, and so forth) in a given culture. We des ign ate particular
is taken to be. On the other h and, pl ace is also a quite distinctiv e feature
places by th e place terms of the culture to which we as place design ators
of such e xperience . Place is not a purel y formal o per at or empty of con­
and pl ace dwellers belong, but the pl aces we design at e are not bare sub­
tent but is always conten tful, alway s specifiab le as this particular place or
strates to which these terms are attached as if to a n unadorned b edrock.
that one. And if both things are true of pl ace, if it is b oth for mally true of
The y are named or n ame able parts of the l andscape of a region, it s con­
every experi ence and true to each particular experience, the� any rigid
densed and l ived phy siognomy.24 _
distinction between formal and substantive univ ers als will dissolv e be ­
Th� power_ of place consist s in its nontendentious ability to reflect the
fore our ver y eyes. The deconstruct ion of this distinction will �e ady be
ost div erse items that constitute it s "mid st." In many regards, a pl ace is
� _ effected by the cha r acter of place it se lf, by it s inherent gener ative force.
its midst, being in the mid st of its own detailed content s ; it is what lies
For in the end, pl ace is neit her formal (place is not a condition of but
most d�epl y amid its own constituent s, gathering them together in the
a force for) nor substantiv e (th ere is not a fixed number of places i n the
expressiv e l andscape of that pl ace. No mind could e ffect such gather ing,
universe, or of particul ar fe atures or kind s of places).
and the b ody, though necess ary to its attainment, requires the holding
and keeping actions n ative to the place it is in.25 This allows us to ask: Is the only choice that between "bloodless uni ­
versals" and "sub stantive identities" (Geertz 1973:43-44)? Is not the aim,

I
in anthrop ology as in any philosophy that is sensitive to the diff erences
Truths involve universals, and all know diff erent cultures make, to discover genuine concret e univers als, that is,
ledge of truths involves acquain­
tance with universals.
st ructures that are at once el astic enough to be exemplified in dispa­
- Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy
r ate cultures y et also taut enough to b e di scerni bly different from e ach
T�us we are led back to a question that other in cont ent or definition? An example would be funer al practice s,
was posed at the beginning of
this essay: Is pl ace a uruversal? Here we which are observ ed by all k nown cultu res yet which diff er d ramatically
are inclined to ask in a skepti­
cal vein How can th epitome of the lo from culture to culture. The ma rking of de ath and the remarking of the
'. � cal be a matt er of the general?
�hat kmd of generality can pl ace possess? What sort of uni l ife that p reced ed it is concret ely univ ers al, though the modes of mark­
it be? Indeed, how co uld it be a univers versal might
al at all in face of the enormous ing and remarking are tangibly div erse. A concrete universal of this sor t
di-�ersity of pl aces hich anthropology, m is neither so adamantine as to b e indiff erent to it s instantiations nor so
'"'. ore than any other discip
line,
bnngs to our attention? Does not all th purely refle ctive as to be th e indifferent mirroring of any and ev er y cul ­
is div ersity make the search for
s ameness a futile a nd misguid tural difference: neit her for m of indiff erence does justice to the actual
ed effor t?
In 1.spects <?(, th e �?eory of yn x, ho difference which the embod iment of a concrete univ ersal introduces. As
� �� � msky (1965) dis tinguishes be­
twee
n_ formal and substantive uruvers als. Substantive univers Hegel insisted, a concrete univ ers al is operat ive in conting ent circum­
fixed m �h:iracter and delimited in numb als are
er: for example, Jakobson's list stances a nd ha s no life apart fro m those circumstances. Let us say th at i t
of the d1stmct1ve features
whose various combin ations de is endoskeletal to what happens in a giv en time and place and yet suffi­
phono1?g1c terrru·ne the
· al component of given natu ral l anguage ciently gener ic to be immanent to occur rences in other times and places
s, or the Port-R
sy ntactic categories of No oyal
un, Verb, and so forth. Formal (not just by homology but by actual ingredience).
universals, in
Does this mean that the kind of univers al at stak e in place is nothing
 •r�.•�:, • •,,.,�.....,,_� '.'•� -� ·•· ·,,, .,,..-,1.._1' r.e'll
".·-:-:��"1!' . ,
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,

JO I EOWARD S. CASEY
HOW TO GET FRON SPACE TO PLACE I JI

�ut an "empirical commonality," that wh ex ample, memories and th oughts-belong to Soul , regarded as a dis­
ich just ha p ens to be the case
m several or even man y times and pla p
tinc tive ly differ ent region (y et one tha t is c ommensur ate with that of
ces? 26 N o : the emp irically com-
mon c omes down to stat1s· t1·cal frequ things).28 Similarly, placial phenom ena such a s lo cation a nd situa ti on be­
e nc y or c ontingent overlap and fails
to capture wha_t is share
d by members of a class of things that all p os­ long to the r e gion Place. Within Place as a gener ic region, par ticula r
sess �ome genum ely generic tr ait (w kin ds of places abound: wild places and built places at one level , kitchens
hethe r this be an ac tion, a qualit y, a
relatwn, or s ome other chara cteristic and be droom s at anothe r, and so on .
). While manife sted in the "special
worl�" (idios kosmos, as the ancient Gre A given place, like any thing else charac te rized by mate r ial esse nces,
ek s would say) o f a partic ular place
an� time, the share d trait never theless is inseparable from the concre te region in w hic h it is found and instan­
belongs to the "common wor ld"
(komos kosmos) of authentic conc ret t ia te s qualities and relations found in that region. This is true not ju st of
e univ e rsals. S uch a bivalent unive r­
sal, be�onging both to special worlds phy sical pl aces but of other sor t s of pl a ce s as we ll: just as, say, the Grand
an d to a comm on world, ser ves to
relate Item s that would
o ther wise be a m e r e co ngerie Cany on is qualifie d by prope rties that are regional in a geological sense
ms that , at
?1°st, resemble each other. It is thus a relatio nal universsalofthter at consists in (e.g., the pre sence of ar ro y o s, colore d sandstone rock layering, cer tain
Its ver y capacit� to assemble things a e ffects of seasonal wea the r), so the place of the Grand Can y on in my
s well as kinds of things.
�hus we illlght well agree with Ber t m emo ry of it occupies a regio n of my ps y che (r ou ghly, that of "mem ories ­
rand Russell (1912:152) that a
relat10nal umv · e rsal 1· s "ne1·ther m· space nor m · e , nei·ther material nor
· tim of-trav el ing-in -the -American -Southwest "). Fr om this simple e xample it
mental," y et "it is [still] something." Bu is e vident , o nce a gain, that place is not one k ind of thing: it can be p s y­
t what kind of some thing is it? If
It m anages not to be 1� space or time chical as well as phy sical, and doubtless also cultu ral md historic al and
, can it nevertheless be in place ? I
:,ivoul d hazar d that the kmd of unive rsal s ocial. But as a cohere nt region in Husse rl's sense of the term, it hol ds
most relevant to a philosophically
mfor med an� hropol ogy of place is at once
c on cre te and relational - con­ these kinds-and much e lse besides - togethe r. 29
crete as relational (and vice versa)-and
ser ves to connect disparate da ta If place is indee d regional in any such se nse as this, it cannot be uni­
across cul tures, y et not empt
ily and in name only Such versal in tra ditional Wester n accep ta tions of this ter m. In particular, it
a universal pro ­
cee ds l ate rally, by assimila t
ing phenomena of the same
.
le vel of abstraction cannot be a substantive or a formal unive rsal. The universality of place is
rath er than vertically (by
subsuming concrete phe nomena under too comple x-or too loose-to be capture d by these classical for ms of
abstra ct ter m s).27 L ater al uni
mor�
ver sals are espe cially pertinent to the anthro­ univer sality, one of wh ich reduces to sam eness of content and the other
p_ology and phenomenology _of plac�. For
in their v er y concreteness, par­ to identit y of for m. Pl ace is more complicated than this, and its unive r­
ti cular pl �ces do �ot form
hiera rchi es of increasi ng a
bstraction. Instea d, sality is at once conc rete, relation al, lateral, and regi onal. Of these trait s,
they fall mto Van ous grou
pings of comparably concrete terms : hom "r egional" is the most co mprehensive a nd can be regarde d a s contain­
places, _workplaces, way stations, and s o e
forth. The consti tution of such in g in nuce the o ther traits. For a s a regi o nal univer sal, place is de fmed
places 1s a t once conc rete -relational an
d lateral in scope and is e ffe cte d by a mater ial essence o r set of such essences, each of w hich is concr ete
by p laces the mselves (much more so tha
n by times, which ser ve to sep arate and relational a nd each of which als o op erate s by late ral inclusio n. In its
more than to connect). Minds may note
the sam eness share d by di
places, _bu_t the y do not _make this same fferent regionality, a place cannot superintend objects in ge ne ral (i.e., abstrac t ob­
ness. The sameness is the wo rk of jec ts such as number s) in the manner of a formal domain. A given place
places m mteract1on with bodies that fi
nd themselv es enga ged in
-� ut what does samenes� of place s them. such as the Grand Canyon bear s only on its own actual o ccupants, w hich
ignify? Certainly no t i d
positro n-a much more delimited con entit y of are structur ed by the same material essences by which the place itself is
cept. Places are significantly the
same when they are member s of t to be co nstrued. The things and loca litie s, th e peo ple and animals in the
he same m aterial reoio �
catenate wit · h each other to form regions of thin o "· Places con- cany o n, are hel d together not just by their literal loca tion in the same
gs· A reg1· on, as Huss er1 piece of geography but, mor e significantly, by the fact that they are p art ef
conceiv · es it· , ho1ds together things that share th
e same "matena· l essence "
(sachha ztig· es Wese n) , whi. ch - unlike a form t he same p lace -a pla ce exhibiting variou s m a terial-essen tial featur es po s­
. al essence-has 1·ts Own pos1· t1v ·
conten t. Th1s content affiliate · s thmg. s in such a way that we may
e sessed or reflecte d by every thing in that place (aridity, verticality, rou gh
t hem as b e1ongm · g to the same overall re gio
co ns ider textures, etc.).
. n. Thus phy s1c· a1 thmg
. s qua
phy s1cal be1ong to the region of Nature As a regional univer sal, place cannot be tucked away in cro ss -cultur al
. Psychological phenomena c
-r or area files as just ano ther "common-den ominator of cul ture " (Murdock
ll I EDWUD !. um HOW TO GET FRON SPACE TO PLACE I JJ

1957), that is, something possessing only empir ical commonality. The
c ommonality of the regional is deter mined by material essentialities and
n ot by empirical congruen�i es. B ut it would b e equally mistaken to as­
I Just as nature finds its way to the core of my personal life and becomes
inextricably linked with it, so behavior patterns settle into that nature,
being deposited in the form of a cultural world.
-Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception
sume that place, not being built on such mere congruen cies, is too idio­
Now we must, finally, put culture back in place. This is not, of cour se, to
�y ncratic to be discussed intelligibly, that is, too singular to be the sub­
J ect of any investigation sensitive to the possibility of essential structure. locate it anywhere other than where it already is. Yet the abiding em­
Place is again in the middle, situated b etween the Charybdis of sheer sin­ placement of cultural prac tices has often gone unackn owledged. All too
_ frequently, late moder n Eurocentr ic thin king has located cul ture in two
gula�1ty and t�e S c ylla of c ontinge nt c ommonality. It occupies an inter­
mediate area m what Collin gwood calls the "sca le of fo r ms" that defines extremes- eithe r in over t b e havio ral patter ns (in "positivisms" of many

human knowledge (see Collingwood 1932:passim). Neither the most ab­ sorts, sedimented in the naturliche Einstellung that so disturbed Husser l) or
stract memb er of this scale (a leadin g candidate for which is doubtless in symbol systems (e.g., in str ucturalist accounts of ve rbal language and
"obj ect in general") n or the most conc rete (this is the utter "individual," transver bal symbols). Culture is situated eith er in something stri ctly ob­
Aristotle's tode ti, th e bare "this-here"), place is nevertheless suffi ciently servable or in something sheerly diaphanous: the perceived and recorded
general to be coh erently discussed as a guiding or regulative n otion - actio n or the eva ne scing sign.

fo r mstance, in this ver y essay- and yet suffi ciently par ticular n ot to be These radical measures, ta ken respectively by psy chol ogy and semi­
fully subsumable under formal essences. In Husserl's oxymoronic lan­ ology, may have been justified at the time they were proposed, and all
the more so as a reaction to the unremitting mentalism and historic ism
�age, plac� is a n "eidetic singularity," singular en ough to b e unique to a
g1�en occasion and ye t wide-ran ging enough to exceed what is peculi ar so prevalent in eighteenth- and nineteenth- centur y thou ght. If Culture
to It alone on th at same occasion.30 is n ot located in Mind-mind as represen tationa l (Loc ke) or mind as
Even� place do es not fu nction as a fo r mally or substantively universal Obj ective Spirit (Hegel)- it is also n ot positioned in Histor y (least of all
c ncept, It 1s noneth eless a concrete and relational general ter m that con­
� in a teleologically ordered model of histor y c onsidered as a ser ies of pro­
tributes to the constitution of an entire region . Th e many ways in whic h g ressively super ior stages). Althou gh beh aviorism took us altogether out
place figu res into the discourse and life of native (as well as contempo­ of our minds and synchronically based semiologies lured us out of di a­
rar y Western� peop�es-in fact, never does not figure in some signifi cant c hronic histor y, each enter prise flung itself into a n ext reme epicen ter of
manner -:-pom� to its status as genuinely gen eral, th at is, pervasive in its overreaction. More recently, counter- c ounter measures have set in : cog­
very part1culanty. Construed in this light, indeed, the local is the gen­ nitive psychology has b rought be haviorism back to a mo re subtle look at
_
eral. Part1c �lar pla ces tell us how a region is-how it disposes itself. They mind, and hermeneutical theor ies of meaning have drawn the theor y of
are th t re gio n s c onden sed
� wntent and are indispensable fo r conceiving symbols into a richer sense of the dense i nterpretive matrix from whic h
what 1s regionally the same m the very face of the manifold descriptive language and other sign systems sp r ing.
and explanatory, gestural and linguistic, historical and social ethical and Yet within this large ly salutar y return to the specificities of mind
political_ diffe�ence� that distin?uish the life-worlds of diver: e peoples. and sign, the inherent emplacem ent of cultu re has been missed. B rau del
Preci sely m th eir c omparative sameness, pl aces prove to be universal: (1972) pointed toward this emplacement i n his monumen tal study of
they are the necessar y basis fo r regional specification. Without places, the geographical basis of histor y in the age of Phillip II, but this bold
regions w�uld b e �acuous and thus all too ea sy to collapse into each direction has n ot been ta ken up in other dis ciplines. I n fact, no system­
oth �r-ult�a�ely, Into abstract space. As it is the essence of a place to be atic effort has been made to accou n t fo r th e indispensability of pla ce in
regional, so_ 1t IS equally essential to a region to be anchored in particular the evolution and p resentation of cultu ral institutions, beginning with
places. If this were not the c�se, if plac� "."er� after all merely contingent the fact that the ver y cultivation at sta ke i n culture has to occur somewhere.
_
or common-merely empmcal-and if 1t did not involve somethin g of "Ever yone supposes," remarks Aristotle n onchalantly, "that things that
th � o rder of essence, it would not possess the "power" ascr ibed to it by are are somewhere, because what is n ot is n owhere" (1983:208 a 29-
Aristotle over two millennia ago.
30). Given that culture manif estly exists, it must exist somewhere, and it
exists more c oncr etely and c ompletely in plac es than in minds or signs.
The ver y word culture meant "plac e tilled" in Middle English, and the
34 I EDWARD !. um HOW TO GET FRON !PACE TO PLACE

same word goes back to Latin co/ere, " to inhabit, care for, till, worship." In other words, the ende mic status of culture -p ervading bodies
and places and bodies-in-places-is matched by the equally e ndemic in­
To b e cultural, to have a culture, is to inhabit a place sufficien tly in­
te nsely t cul tivate it - to be respon sible for it, to respond to it, to attend
sinuat ion of "wild B eing" into the body/place matrix. Even the most
_ _o
to it canngly. Wh er e el se but in p articular places can culture take root? cul turally saturated place retains a factor of wildness, that is, of the radi­
C�rtainl� not in the thin air above these places, much less in the even cally amorphous and unacc ounte d for, som ething that is not so much

thinn er arr of pure speculation about the m. immune to cultu re as ali en to it in its very midst, disparate from it from
To be located, cul ture also has to b e embodied. Culture is carried into within. We se nse this wildness explicitly in momen ts ofabsu rdity-and
laces by bodies. To be encultured is to be embodied to begin wit h. T his
of "surdity," sheer " thisness." But it is immanen t in every pe rceptual e x­
p
is t�e common lesson of Merleau-Ponty and ofBourdieu, both ofwhom perience and thus in every bodily inser tion into the perceived places
ms1st on the capita l importance ofthe "customary body"-the body that anchoring each such exp er ie nce. T his ontological wildness-not to be
h as mcorpora ted cultural patter ns into its basic actions. T hese actions de­ confused with literal wilderness, much less with mere lack of cultiva­
p end on habitus, " history tur ned into nature," a second nature that br ings tion-ensures that cultur al analysis never exh austs a give n place. Just

culture to bea r in it s very move me nts (Bourdieu 1977: 78). Moreover, just as we should not fall into a p ercep tualism that leaves no room for ex­
as the body is ba sic to enculturation, so the body is itself always already pressivity and language, so we ought not to espouse a culturalism that
encultura ted. No more than space is prior to place is the body prior to accords no autochthonous being to place s, no alterity. In the very he ar t
cultu re. Rather than being a passive recipie nt or mere vehicle of cultural of the most sophisticated circumstance is a wil dness that no culture can
enac �ments, the body is itse lfenactive ofcultural practices by v irtue ofits contain or explain, much less reduc e. T he wildness exceeds the scope of
considerable powers of incor poration, habituation, and expression. And the most subtle set of signifi ers, despite the effor ts ofpain ters to cap t ure

as a cre ature of habitus, th e same body necessarily inhabits places that are it in images and of storytellers to depict it in words. 32
themse lves cultur ally inform ed. (I t also inh abits places by r ising to the Precisely because ofthe ubiquity ofsuch wildness in body, place, and
chall nge of the novel c ircumsta nce.) F ar from being dumb or diffuse, c ulture, the t emptation to espou se the idea of a prima ry "p recultural"
�
th l ved body is as intel ligent about the c ult ural specificities of a place
: � level of e xp er ience is difficult to overcom e. P erhaps no ser ious Western
as It 1s aesthesiologically sensitive to the p erceptual particularities ofth at thinker, including Husserl and M erleau-Ponty, has altogether resisted the
same place. Such a body is at once encultured and emplaced and encul­ cha risma of the precu ltural-esp ecially w he n it accompanie s a preoccu­
_
turatmg a nd empl acing-while bei ng m assiv ely sentient all th e while. pation with uncovering the foundations of exp er ience and knowle dge.
Basic to local knowledge, therefore, is knowledge of place by means But the passion for epis temic (and other) origins is itself culturally sp e­
ofthe body: such knowledge is "knowledge by acquaintance" in Russe ll's cific and stems from an ep istemophilic pr oclivity that is not ingraine d
m em�r�ble phra se (1912: ch. 5). Bodi es not only perceive but know places. or instinctual, Aristotle's and Freud's claims notwithstanding. All human
P erce1�mg bodi es are knowing bodies, and inse parable from what they beings may desire to know, but th ey do not always desire to know in the
know 1s culture as it imbues and shapes particular places. It is by bodies foundationalist ma nner that is an obsessive concern of European civ ili­
th at p�aces become cultural in character. It is all too easy to suppose tha t zation. Moreover, whatever people may wish to know, they ar e already
what 1s cultural represent s an articulate d separate stratum laid down on a doing at the bilateral level ofknowing bodies and known places. As know­
m�t� pe�c�pt�al g�ound. In fact, even the most pr imordial level of per­ ing and known, bodies and places are not precultural- even if they are
ce1v mg 1s mla1d
:"1th cultural categories in the form of differential pat­ prediscursive as directly e xp erien ce d. T heir very wildnes s contains c ul­
�erns ofrecogrut1on, wa_ ys oforganizing th e perce ptual field and acting in ture in their midst, but cu lture itse lf is wild in its intensity a nd force .
It, a nd manners of des1gnatmg and naming items in this field. T hus cul­ T his is a lesson to be take n back into place._ Despite the inherent wild­
ture �ervades the way th at place s are pe rce ive d and the fact that they ar e ness ofall places (in cluding urban places), there are no first-orde r places,
p erceive d, as well as how we act i n their midst . As Merleau-Ponty puts it no First Places that altogether withstand cultural p ervasion a nd sp ecifi­
"th e dis�inction betwee n the t wo planes (natural and cultural) is abstract ; cation. But we can continue to endorse the Archytian Axiom of place's
everything IS cukural in u s (our Lebenswelt i s "subj ective") (ou r percep tion
p rimacy-to be is still to be in place -provi de d only that we recognize
1s cultural-h1stoncal) and ever ything is natural in us (even the cultural that places are at onc e cultu ral and percep tual as well as tam e and wild.
rests on the polymorphism of wild Bei ng)" (M erleau-Ponty 1968:253)_31
And provide d, too, that we re alize that the place-world de fies division
 r,•.U'\�� ,.._-.-- t 'f:t � ,,- ,;/,,
·,�/•
,,,,.,.,_�l!"
tit:: ''•W''
'.� ,, •• • �• -

HOW TO GIT HOH SPACE TO PLACE I 37

36 I E DWUD I. om

spatial relations or temporal occurrences in a particular place. Now I am in

�to two_ dist_inct domains of Nature and Culture. If it is e qually true that Not only
everything 1s natural in us" and that "everything is cultural in us," this is a room in Atlanta, and it is h ere that I am co mp osing this essay.

so pnmai:ily within the concrete and complex arena of place, where the the punctiform here and now, but also relations and occurrences ofmuch
coadunat1on of the natural and the cultural arises in every experience more considerable scop e collect around and in a single place. My quar­
and every event- and in every expression thereof. ters are an integral part of a house in a certain neighborhoo d and city,
themselves set within an entire r egion called "the South," all of which
have their own dense historicities as well as geographies. Even these33ex­

I I can only say, there we have been: b t I cannot say where. And I cannot
say, how long, for that 1s_ to place 1t_ rn
- T. S. Eliot, "Burnt Norton"
:-1
time.
tensive geo-histories I grasp from within my delimited room-place.
Space and time, then, are found precisely in place-the very place that
was declared by Newton to be mere ly "a part ofspace which a body takes
Place is �ot only coadunative but also (as I have already hinted) de­ up" (Newton 1687: Scholium to the Definitions, III). As we have seen,
construct1ve-deconstructive of oppositions that it brings and holds Newton considered space to be "absolute." But in a self-undermining
to�ether within its own ambience. These oppositions include binary aside, Newto n himself wrote that "times and spaces are, as
it were, the
paus of terms that have enjoyed hegemonic p ower in Western episte­ places of themselves as of all other things" (Newton 1687: section IV; my
molo� and metaphysics. I am thinking of such dicho tomies as subject italics).34 No t only do imperial space and time re quire recourse to l owly
and obj ect, self and other, formal and substantive, mind and b ody, inner places in their v ery definition (rather than conversely), but also the status
and outer, p erception and imagination (or memo ry), and nature and cul­ of space and time as e qual but oppo site terms is put into question by their
t�re themselves. It is always from a p articular place that a perso n, con­ commo n emplacement. The binarist dogma stretching from Newton and
sidere 1 � a k�owing "sub�ect," seizes upon a world of things presumed Leibniz to Kant and Schop enhauer is undone by the basic perceptio n
to be obj ects. The reducuon of persons to subjects-and, still more ex­ that we experience space and time together in place-in the locus of a
tremely, to minds-and of things to objects could not occur anywhere continuous "space-time" that is proclaimed alike in twentieth-century
o �her than m place. Yet to b e fully in a place is to know-to know by physics, philosophy, and anthropology.
direct acquamtance as well as by cultural habitus-that such a double To sp eak of space-time is to sp eak once more of event. For an event is
reduc6on delivers only the shadowy simulacrum of the experiences w e at once spatial and temporal , indeed indissolubly b oth: its
spatial quali­
happ ening itself
�ave m th� t place. (It is also to know that the mere representation of ob­ ties and r elations happen at a particular time. But the
j ects by mm�s, or of places by maps, is a further reduction.) Similarly, to occurs in a place that is e qually p articular. Thus "event" can be considered
be emplaced 1s to know the hollowness of any strict distinction b etween the spati otemporalizatio n of a place, and the way it happe as spatio­
ns
what is insid e one's mind or body and what is outside or between what temporally specified. It is revealing that we speak of an event as having
is perceived and what is remembered or imagined, o� between what is "a date and a place," replacing "space " by "place." This is in keeping with
natural a_nd w�a� _ is cultural. When viewed from the stance of place, Heidegger's observatio n that "spaces receive their essential be ing from
these various d1v1S1ons enter into a deconstructive meltdown-or more particular localities and not from 'space' itself" (Heidegger 1971:154).
exactly, they are seen to have been nondiscontinuous to begin
with: at­ Even if we cannot replace "date" by "place," we can observe that there
one, "esemplastic" in Coleridge's word. is no such thing as a pure date, a sheer occurrence that occurs nowhere.
One very important dichoto my subject to the deconstructive power
_ Every date is an emplaced happ ening. And since every date, every time,
of�lace 1s that ofsp ace and time, which we have seen to be twin preoccu­ is indissociably linked with sp ace, it is ultimately, or rather first of all,
pations of mo?ern thinking in the West. But the phenomenol ogical fact situated in a "particular locality."
of the matter is that space and time come together in place.
_ Indeed, they arise When we say that something "happ ens in space and time," this way
from _the exp erience of place 1__ tself Rather than being separate but e qual ell as th e
of putting it no t o nly reinforces the putative primacy (as w
�o;rruc parameters-�s we believe when we say (with Leibniz) that space equally putative e quiprimo rdiality) of space and time but also fosters
1s th� order of co - ex1ste_nce" and time "the order ofsuccession" occur at precise
(Leibniz the impression that for som ething to happ en it must a
1956 . 1066)-space and time are themselves coordinated and co-sp
. ec1n
·c. e d p oint or moment. Punctiformity is the very basis of specification by cal­
m· � he common matrix provided by place. We realize the essential on," in
_ po s- endars, clocks, and maps and is thus a matter of "simple locati
tenonty of space and time whenever we catch ourselves appreh nd tim e. (For
ending Whitehead's term for isolated punctate positions in space a
38 I EDWARD !. CA!EI
HOW TO GET FRON !PACE TO PLACE I 39

White hea d's treatment f

.
The poet, al ong with the
° stmP
· le loca tion, .
see Whitehead 1925:S0ff.) 35 room, you read them in yours-somewhere. Of course, I could write
ord.mary person, knows better: to say "there we in a different place and you cou ld read in another place. But the loci
have been" is · not the same thing as to
in geographIC . s ay precis . e1y where we ha ve been y ou and I are in nevertheless influence, sometimes quite considerably,
al space, and if we are to exp
we "cannot say how long .
ress the duratio n of an event overt actions such a s rea ding and wr itin g, and they influence still more
, fcor that 1s to p1ace it i n time." In the modern what Malinowski (1922: 18) calls "the imponderabilia of actual life," such
W,estem era , to' place in tim . .
that is' O n a P1anifiorm
e or m spa ce 1s . ately to situate in site,
u1 ttm thi ngs as emotional tona lity, degree of impati enc e, the understanding of
su ·
rface o f p o mt-mome
ts. A site is an exsanguin- a text, relatio ns with consoci ates, a nd so forth.
ated place -prec.
n
1sely the sort of scene .m wh ic .
If this is true of our imm edi ate locus- of what Hu ss erl called the
to tnu · mph over place· But . h space and time seem
wha t if m atters are the other way around? "near sphere"-it is just as true of more generous placial units such as the
What if ti· me space a
nd the.ir proJ.ectw .
n s and re duc tions as sites are hous e we inhabit or the building in which we work.37 Both Bachelard
non-simp1y 1o'
cate d in'. places:>· Then P1a ce wouId
occasion fcor_ happen.mgs no 1 onger be the mere and Heidegger insist that it is in dwellings that we are most acutely sen­
positioned in an infinitely capacious spa sitive to the effects of places upon our lives. Their "intimate immensity"
time • Place 1tself would ce and
be the happen. mg, and space and tim wh allows them to condens e the duration and historicity of inhabitation in
occasions' what 1· t spec 1e e a t it
ifi s m dete rmm · ate and measurable sites. one architecturally structured place.38 What happ ens in such "domestic
The "eventmental" cha .
racter 0f P1aces, the 1r capacity
. for co -locating space" is an event in the sense discussed in the last section. Equally event­
space and t'tme (even a
s they . decons_truct th'_is very dya d), ful, howev er, are the journeys we ta ke between the dwellings in which
sidered a final form of can be con-
her�ng. This form is not the ga�hering we reside, for we also dwe ll in the intermediate places, the interplaces, of
particular persons and t: -out of
s
gathering effected b h � ; a configured place or region, or the in­ travel-places which, even when brie fly visited or me rely traverse d, are
a still more gen er
of the very Power of e
al I:.i1 e o f as the c�ux of
Pervasive gathermg-w1th that occurs
mplac�ment to bring sp ace and tim
na ture and c ulture, but

by virtue
never uneventful, never not full of spatiote mporal specificiti es that re ­
fl ect particular modes and moods of empla ceme nt. Even on the hoof, we
the event· Such comp e tog ether in remain in place. We are never anywhere, anywhen, but in pl ace.
rehens1ve gath erm · g is · the turning point of space
and time , th e pivo · t where space and t. Midway between staying at home and ma king a journey is the arena
most inclusive and une conJ.om . .
m p1ace. Just as this of ceremonial action. When ceremonial action concerns rites of passage (a
n ous gatheri ng is _t
a nd time constr h e underrni�ng of spac e term redolent with the idea of "the passing of time"), however, it is all
ued ::°;i: : ndent and pree
the basis for any the xistmg dtmens10 ns, it is also too temptin g to consider this action a matter of sheer diachronic devel­
o/sp ac� �nd time
simu ltaneous or succ:? taken as absolute or relativ e, opment- "stages on life's way," in Kier kegaard's timely phra se. Thus it
sive, mtwt1ve or conceptual
o f sp ace and time · The deconstruction is all the more striking that van Gennep, whose Rites ef Passage was first
• n. But th by pl ace. cIears th.e way for therr ·
t10 e two dimen
· COll.J· omt reconstruc- published in 1909 (the sa me year in which Her tz's "The Pre -Emine nce
si ons remam first and 1ast, d'
and they are ex per ' . 1me ns1on
· s of place, of the Right Han d" appeared), re fuse d this temptation and insisted on
ienced and expressed in place by the event ofplace.36 describing the three -fold process of separation, transition, and incor­

I As native concepts and poration in resolu tely spatial, or, more exa ctly, placial, te rms. Van Gen­
tures of the local topograbePIief,s find external purchase on specific fea­ nep insisted, for example, that "territorial passage" provides the proper
crisp new dimension th hy, t�_e entire landscape seems to acquire a framework for an understanding of ritualized p ass age in the social sphere :
It more surely mto vie
discourse, the local lan�:;i w. .
;;�s neati y and repeatedly into.. In native
-Keith Basso, "'S,n
rea k·mg Wit. hpNames , . places
Apa che" Langu age and LAndscape among the Western
The passage from one social position to another is identified with a territorial
passage, such as the entrance into a village or a house, the movement from
The gathering power of . one room to another, or the crossing of streets and squares. This identifica­
place works m many ways and at many 1
the mundane 1evel of evels. At
tion explains why the passage from one group to another is so often ritually
every day lif e _ we are con . expressed by passage under a portal, or by an 'opening of the doors'. (van
circumstanc es in '
which places provi de t tmually confronted
he scene for acfion and with Gennep 1960:192; his italics)
fceeIi ng and expression. thought
Think on1Y of where yo u a
words: the p1ace you are i . . re as you rea d th '
n ght now act1v�ly ese Under the he ading of territorial passage itse lf, van Gennep discusses
for) the act of reading this t supports (or at least
ext. Just as I wnte these a llo ws such notions as frontiers, borders, crossroa ds, and landmarks. Most im­
words m• my
Atlanta portant of all, however, is the concept of threshold, in which movement

---
---
40 I EDWUD !. CASEY HOW TO GET F!ON !PACE TO PLACE I 41

from one place to anot her is effected. A threshold is t he concrete inter ­ "co nstitute a mode ofsp acetime form ed t hrough the dynamic s ofact ion
place of an impo rtant transit ion. Van Gennep emphasizes the p articu­ (notably giving and traveling) connecting persons and places" (Munn 1986 ::;
_
l �1ty ofthe thres hold; only as this place can it serve as the support for a my italics).41 Gifts offood (as well as other item s o fhospitality) occur m
nte ofp assage: p articular places ofexchange, either on one 's home island or on an island
to which one has traveled by ca noe. These gifts p recede kula exchange
The door is the boundary between the foreign and domestic worlds in the p roper and are the "dynamic base " of such ex change by virtue ofus her­
case of an ordinary dwelling, between the profane and sacred worlds in the
ing in the event ofex change itself, which take s place in an extensive area
case of a temple.Therefore to cross the threshold is to unite oneself with a _ tly
new world. It is thus an important act in marriage, adoption, ordination, and all to o easily conceived in ter m s o f object ive sp ace. B ut Munn ngh
funeral ceremonies.(van Gennep 1960:20) 39 refuses this temptation:
The very "transit ion" effected by p assing through a threshold is inextri­ Although kula shell transactions also entail dyadic exchange units [i.e., as
cably place-bound, and it s desc r ipt ion requ i res an enti re p araphernalia in hospitality relations] ... these transactions are not restricted exchanges
ofplace predicates (e.g., "boundary" and "zone "). or closed spacetimes. The shells that the two men transact travel beyond
B�t precisely at t his cr itical juncture, van Gennep disappoints us. them.... The travels of kula shells create an emergent spacetime of their
own that transcends that of specific, immediate transactions. This spacetime
Ignor ing t he manifest place-situatedness of his own descr ipt ions, he as­ may be thought of as that of circulation. (Munn 1986:57-58)
serts that "the symbolic and spatial area of transition m ay be found in more
or less pronoun ced form in all the ceremonies which a ccompany the Implicit here i s a dist inc tion between what I have called "place
passage from one social and magico-religious position to another," con­ prop er"-instanced in the con crete transact ions o f hospitality and shell
cluding that "the spatial separation ofdistinct group s is
an asp ec t of social exc hange- and "region" (i.e., a collo cat io n of inter nally relat ed pla ces ),

� rganization" (van Gennep 1960:18, 192; my italics). Here van Gennep, in which t he defining unit is t hat oft he kula shell in its circulato r y jour ­
like Durk heim, r�lies on the language ofsp ace and spatialit y as ifit were ney. At every stage of t his jour ney, t he s hell requires new transact ion s
t�e only alternative to talk oft ime and tempo ralit V to relay it. Eac h suc h transact ion can be said to const itute a sp acet ime
y. an Gennep recog­
ruzes what Bourdieu calls a "theoretical sp ace " - and this is a significant and not merely to fit into an already exist ing framewo rk of sp ace and
move �eyon� t he temporocentr ism implicit in the very idea ofp assage­ t ime. The fram ework is created and rec reated wit h each successive tran s ­
but rrussmg 1s an explicit acknowledgment ofthe concrete place-specific ac tion.42
c haracter o� his _ own exampl Per hap s t he most p ersuasive instance ofsuch a con stitut ion ofspace­
es and prim ar y term s of des cript ion. In
comp any with so many other moder n thinkers, van Gennep suffers fr om t ime is the construct ion and laun ching oft he ca noes t hat are requisite to
what Freud calls "the blindness ofthe seeing eye." 40 Place is there to be kula exchange while also be ing objects ofa sp ec ial exc hange t hemselves.
_
seen 1 fonly we have t he vi sion to behold it. To build canoes is both to engage in a spe c ific sp at iotempo ral event of
A decisive step beyond van Gennep's i s taken by Nancy Munn in her m aking- a bodily ac tion calling for a p art icular place ofconstruction­
d1s_ �er rung analy s is of kula exchange, a highly r itualistic action t hat, like and to fac ilitate the reaching o fot her islands by a sp ec ifi c p at hway (keda)
a nte of p assage, is subject to misco ns trual from
the star t. In t hi s case, between them. No wonder the launching ofsuch canoes is a major event:
howe�er t he pr �ary mispr ision h as to do with sp ace rather than with "The canoe is finally launched," wr ites Malinowski (1922:147), "after the
�
time : if pas �ag� lea�s us to think pr imar ily of time, kula "ex c hange," long series ofmingled wo rk and cerem ony, technical effor t and magical
.
especi�y m it s mter-island fo rm, tempts us to
think mainly i n term s o f r ite." Thi s series o f events i s it self a r ite of p assage in whic h (as Mun n
transac tions across geographical space. As Munn demonstrates no observes) "tran sit ion takes place across spatiotempo ral zones " as wood is
could be farther from t he truth. ' t hing
located and bespelled above the bea c h, t hen ma de into finished vessels
Alt hough Munn's The Fame of Gawa opens with a cartogr aphi
call y t hat are launched into t he sea (Mu nn 1977:41.) The beach is a t hres hold
a curate m ap of the Massim region of P
: apua New Gui nea, her discus­ and as such has many "medial qualit ies" (Munn 1977 :41), above all it s
sion ?fkula exchange soo n posits a realm ofintersubject ive "sp
acetime " location as if between island and ocean.
t hat i s much clo s r to land scape than to ge
_ _ � _ ography. She shows that kula Canoes t hus connec t one set ofliminal r ituals, int ra -island (i. e., what
participants are mdissolubly linked to local and extralocal
places and happ ens in a place), wit h another set, sp ec ifically inter -island ( kula and
to the pat hway s bet ween t hem. Gawan acts
of hospitality, for instance, canoe exc hange p rop er, i.e., what happ en s between places in a region).
 a
"!-l.)''i,...,...._.",
y�--
TIU,V,,_ •-,.
-..,-�• •-.•':··.��V�•'t"\�l'
�
- •
• ' • 'S"
-
\ '
-
•

HOW TD GET FkDN !PACE TD PLACE I 41

41 I EDWARD I. CA!El

In the end, both sor ts of rituals are bound to pl ace, whether to one might well be reg a rded as ano ther essential structure of place, one that
and the same place or t o different pl aces connected by a sea route. In
could be called "elasticity." But I prefer to regard it as a corollary pro p­
all these pl aces, space and time co mbine forces. The se a v oyage itself,
erty of that perceptual structure ea rlier identified as "external horizo n."
adds Malinowski, "is not done o n the spur of the moment, but ha ppens For the very nature o f such a ho rizon is to open out even as it enclo ses. It
perio dically, at dates settled in a dvance, and it is carried o n along defi­ is intrinsic to perceptual fields to p ossess bleeding boundaries; the l ack
o f such b oundaries co nver t s these fields to delimited and c lo sed-off sit es
nite trade routes, which must lead to fixed trysting places" (Malino wski
1922:85). Here space (in the form of "definite tr ade routes") and time such as priso n cells or jury boxes.
(in terms of "periodical" journeys) come together in place-in places of ex­ By returning to ho rizo ns we have come full circle, and we need only
a dd that the ho rizo ns which form the perceptua l ba sis o f bounda ries are
cha nge co nnected by regio nal pa thways-just a s sp ace and time combine
themselves sp atio temp o ra l in st at us. To be in a percep tual field is to be
in the initial making of cano es. Place and regio n g ather sp ace and time
in emergent events of co nstructio n a nd excha nge. encompa ssed by edges that are neither strictly sp atial-we ca nnot map a
Fo r this gathering to happen, the pl ace and regio n in which it occurs horizo n (even if we ca n dr aw it)-no r strictly temporal: just when does
a ho rizo n happen? A given horizo n is a t o nc e spatial and tempora l, and
must po ssess a property alluded to earlier in this ess ay: porosity of bound­
aries. An impo rta nt aspect o f being in a pl ace o r region is tha t o ne is not it belo ngs to a field that is the perceptual scene of the place who se hori­
limited altogether by determin ate borders (i.e. , leg al limits) or perime­ zo n it is. Once again, but now co rning in from the m argins, we discover
ters (i.e., those est ablished by geography). Fo r a place o r regio n to be an that pl ace includes space and time as p a rt of its own generative power.

event , for it to involve the cha nge a nd movement that are so character­ Rather than being the minio n of an a bsolute space a nd time, place is the
istic o f kula exchange, there must be permeable m argins o f transition. master of their shared m atrix.
The permea bility occurs in numerous forms. A beach, at the edge of

I
the sea a nd subject to tidal encroachments, is certainly exempla ry of a The old meaning of the word "end" means the same as place: "from
po rous bounda ry, but even in a l and-l ocked situatio n such as th at of the one end to the other" means: from one place to the other. The end of
Western Desert of Australia , pl aces and regions can retain a remark able philosophy is the place, that place in which the whole of philosophy's
permeability. As W. E. H. Stanner notes: history is gathered in its most extreme possibiliry.
-Heidegger, "The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking"
The known facts of inter-group relations (in aboriginal Australia) simply do
I started with an unea siness occasioned by recent a nthro pologica l treat­
not sort wnh the idea of precise, rigid boundaries jealously upheld in all
Cll'curnsta nces. And the idea that a region was cut up, as it were without re­ ments of place as so mething supposedly m a de up from sp ace-some­
_
mamder, mto exclusive but contiguous descent-group estates, could not have thing factitious carved o ut of space o r superimpo sed o n space (in the
sufficed for the dynamic aboriginal life we know to have existed. . . . The end, it doesn't matter' which, given the unquestioned premise of space's
conception �hich '.11ost nearly accommodates the facts ... is that of spaced prim acy). From there, a consideratio n of the perceptual basis o f being­
estates with overlapping ranges, and, thus, partially interpenetrative domains and life­
spaces. (Stanner 1965:11-12; his italics)
in-place revealed that human beings a re emplaced ab origine, thanks to
the presence o f depths and horizons in the perceptual field and thanks
Distinct and impenetrable borders may bel o ng to sites as legally a nd geo­ also to the cores o f sense that ancho r this sa me field. The world comes
gr a phically controlled entities, and hence ultim at ely to "sp ace," but they bedecked in places; it is a place-world to begin with.
need not (and often do not) play a significant role in the experience and It was precisely the reso na nce of "t o begin with" that led me later in
knowledge of places and regions- of "estates" and "ranges" in Stanner's this essay to reflect on the kind of universality p ossessed by place. Re­
nomenclature.43 jecting the standard choice between formal and substantive universals­
W hether in the wa ters of the M assim region of Papua New Guinea as well as the related and equally standard choice between a prio ri and
or on the dry_ land of the Western Desert in Austr alia-or anywhere else empirical universals-I expl ored the idea o f a specifically regio nal uni­
place and reg10n, rather than positio n and site, are of determinative im­ versal that is conc rete- cum-rel atio nal a nd that oper ates laterally, across
port-we find that p�ro�sness o�b oundaries is essential to pl ace. A place cases a nd n ot a bove o r under them. Such a universal, which could als o
could not gather bo d1es n the diverse sp atiotemporal ways it does with­
� be called a "general," is metaphysically neutral in that its instantiation
_ _
out the permeability of its o wn limits. The sievelike charac ter o f pl a ces is directly reflective of the particular entities in a given place and their
 HOW TO GET FRON SPACE TO PLACE I ◄5
« I EDWARD S. um
tual peculiarities, its regional universality, an d its metaphysical neutrality.
�o de of configuration. The instantiation itselfoccurs by me ans of essen­ By the same token, "knowledge" nee ds to be reconstrued as specifically
tial structures that pervad e places as we know them. I singled out two placial, as a m atter of acqu aintance with places, knowing them by me ans
structures of special pertinence: the lived bod y's active ingredience in of ou r knowing bodies. Such knowle dge-neither propositional nor
emplacement (i.e., getting into, staying in, an d moving between places) systematic, and not classifiable as simply subjective or objective, natu­
and the g athering power of place itself. Gathering is an event, and an
ral or cultural-is knowledge app ropri ate to the particularities of places
explo ration of place-as-event allowed us to see how places, far from in keeping with their felt p roperties an d cultural specificities. It entails
bemg in�rt and static sites, are themselves continually changing in accor­ an understanding of places, where "un d erstan d ing" is taken literally as
_
dance with thei r own prope r dyn amism. Pl aces are at once el astic-for
standing un der the ample aegis of place (an d pointedly not un der the
example, in regard to their outer edges and internal paths-and yet suffi­ protective precision of concepts).
ciently coherent to be consi dered as the same (hence to be remembe red , Merleau-Ponty (1964b:120) suggests that the anthropologist has "a
returned to, etc.) as well as to be classified as places of certain types (e.g., new organ of un derstan ding at his disposal." Is this o rg an not an un der­
home-pl ace, workplace, visiting place). standing of place? After all, the ethnographer stan ds in the fiel d and takes
Mor�over, the eventful potency of places inclu des their cultural speci­ note of the places he or she is in, getting into what is going on in their
ficity _ Tim
: _e an d history, the diachronic medi a of culture, are so deeply midst. The ensuing un de rstan ding reflects the reciprocity of bo dy and
inscnbe� m places as to be inseparable from them - as inseparable as place-an d of both with cultu re-that is as descriptive of the exper i­
�he bodies that sustain these same places and carry the cultu re located ence of the anthropologist as of the n ative. It also reflects both parties'
in them. But insepar _ ability and inscription are not tantamount to ex­
grasp of a conc rete universality, a generality immanent in place thanks
�a�st10n; : factor of brute being, concealed within the locative phrase to the lateral homologies an d si dewise resemblances between things and
t�s-her�, always acc rues to a given place, ren dering it wild in its very peoples in places. The un derstan ding of place activates universals that are
i_ d10locality, and wild as well in its most highly cultured manifestations. as impure as they are singular.
On this basis I "".as able to draw the heretical inference that space an d Local knowledge, then, comes down to an intim ate understanding
trme_ are containe_ d in places rather than places in them. Whether we are
of what is generally true in the locally obvious; it concer ns wha t is true
concerned wit� dwelling places or places on a journey, with places in
about place in general as m anifeste d in this place. Stan ding in this pl ace
a land scape or in a story (or in a story itself indissociable from a lan d ­
thanks to the absolute here of my bo dy, I un derstand what is true of
scape), v:e witness a concrete topo-logic, an experiential topology, in
other places over there precisely because of what I comp rehend to be
which time and space are operative in places an d are not autonomous
presences or spheres of their own. Proceeding in this direction, we ar­ the case for this place un der an d around me. This does not mean that
_ I understand what is true of all places, but my g rasp of one place does
nve at the opposite side of the mountain of Western mo dernity, which
allow me to grasp what hol ds, for the most par t, in other places of the
had a�sumed ( an d often still assumes, at the level of "common sense")
that time and space, in their impassive absoluteness, are prior to place. same region. My ongoing un derstanding of surroun ding and like places
lnste�d , as Arc?ytas had foretol d , place is prior to all things-even if the is characterized by essential structures manifested in my own local place
an d illumin ating other places as well. That anything like this in duction
very i�ea of pnority needs to be bracketed along with the bin ary logic so
effectively deconstructed by place itself. of place is possible exhibits place's special powe r to embrace and support
Something else to be garnere d from our considerations is that if we even as it boun ds an d locates.
are t take th i de a of local knowle dge seriously, we have to rethink To insist thus on the consi der able outreach of local knowle dge in this
� _ ;
both locality and "�owledge." "Locality" must be rethought in terms m anne r is necess arily to argue against what might be calle d, mo difying
of, first, the triple _ _
distinction between position, place, and regi·on,. sec a celebrate d phrase of Whitehead 's, the Fallacy of Misplace d Abstract­

ond, the 1. dea �f porous boun daries; and third , the role of the lived body ness. By this is meant the ten dency to posit a plane of abst ract perfection
· as the me d1atr� between enculturation and empl acement-their local­ an d purity onto which complexities an d dirty details come crowding.
mng _ age t, as 1t we re. Above all, wh The fallacy consists in believing the plane to be a priori an d settle d, the
� at is local must be allowe d to take
the le ad , i� keeping _ wi_ h the Archytian Axiom: complications a posteriori and changing. The abstractness of this plane is
� place is infirst place with
regard to its configurat1ve arrangements, its landscape logic, its percep- misplaced in that its status as prior is the reverse of what actually obtains:
46 I EDWARD I. um HOW 10 GET HOK SPACE 10 PLACE I 47

the pl ane is itself an abstraction from what is concrete that is from that tion; here, the thesis is that"the world has a beginning in time, and is also limited as
which is supposedly only secondary and epiphenomen:J and y�t is in fact regards space."
2. We might as well say, whereby Nature becomes Culture, since the dominant
phenomenally given as primary. assumption in Western thought of the last three centuries is that Nature presents
� conspicuous instance of this fallacy is the presumption that space itself primarily as Space. Ngurra itself is said, significantly, to be"the place where one
furrushes JUSt such a perfected pl ane, in rel ation to which mere places belongs . . . and to which one returns" (Myers 1991 :55). The idea of "geography"
are nothing but parts or constructs, decoration, or projection. Here the as plain starting-point is especially odd, since geography is itself a second- or even
rrusplac�ment is of pl ace itself, which is shoved into a minority position third-order accretion to the experience of place and, more particularly, of landscape.
Even a geographer as sensitive as Yi-Fu Tuan embraces it: "All people undertake to
(or, which comes to the same thing, reduced to position per se). Time change amorphous space into articulated geography" (Tuan 1977:83).
also exemplifies the fallacy, especially when it is conceived ( as it was by 3. The full statement is:"Perhaps [place] is the first of all things, since all existing
Locke) as "the length of one straight line, extended in infinitum" (Locke things are either in place or not without place" (cited from Simplicius, Commentary
1690: Book Two, chapter 15). In both cases, it is a matter of showing that on Aristotle's Categories, and translated by S. Sambursky in Sarnbursky 1982:37n). The
the true concreteness belongs to pl ace-plain old place, the place under power of the Archytian Axiom pervades the ancient Greek world. Plato cryptically
our feet and around our eyes and in our e ars. quotes it in the Timaeus when he writes that"anything that is must needs be in some
place and occupy some room, and ... what is not somewhere in earth or heaven is
It is undeniable that the concreteness of place has its own mode of nothing" (Timaeus 52 B, in Cornford 1957). Aristotle similarly inscribes the axiom
bst
� �actness:_ th at _is, in its relation ality (there is never a single place exist­ at the opening of his treatment of place in his Physics, Book IV, when, referring to
mg m utter isol ation) and in its inherent regionality (whereby a plura lity Hesiod, he says that "he thinks as most people do that everything is somewhere and
of places �re grouped together). We can admit such relating and region­ in place" (Physics 208 b 32-33).
mg and s�ill avert the d anger of a misplaced abstractness proper to place 4. Immanuel Kant, preface to Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (1974
[ 1797]); my translation. In this lecture course, Karit distinguishes between "physio­
itself. This danger consists in making place, or its components, into a logical" and"pragmatic" forms of anthropology, strikingly anticipating much later
new pl ane of perfection, a new tabul a ras a, onto which all that m atters distinctions between"physical" and"cultural" anthropology. In physiological anthro­
in human experience comes to be written. Spatiocentrism and temporo­ pology, one studies "what nature makes of man," while in pragmatic anthropology
centnsm would then give way to an equally spurious topocentrism! the aim is to grasp "what man, as possessing free activity, can or does or must make
In order to prevent this mere reversa l of priority, I have maintained of himself." He also discusses the need for fieldwork, which he labels "voyages," and
for avoiding an anthropological enterprise based on racial differences as such.
that place is no empty substratum to which cultural predicates come to 5. Aristotle discusses eight senses of "in" in his treatment of place, concluding
be att ached; it i� an _ already plenary presence permeated with culturally that the most pertinent sense is"as a thing is in a vessel" (Physics 210 a 24).
_ .
constituted institutions and practices. As the basis of collective as well 6. The sentence cited is from Husserl (1973:32; in italics in text). Internal and
as individual h abitus, these institutions and practices pervade the bodies external horizons are discussed in Husserl (1973: section 8, "The Horizon-Structure
of seming subjects in a given pl ace as well as the gathering power of the of Experience"). Merleau-Ponty discusses "primordial depth" in his Phenomenology of
Perception (1962 :254-67). The affinity of the notions of"horizon" and"depth" is close:
place itself: even when prediscursively given (and prereflectively experi­
just as every perceived thing is perceived in its own depth-that is, within the hori­
enced), neither body nor place is precultural. Just as place invades space zons provided by its own sides-so a collection of things in a given perceptual field
from the bottom �p, so culture penetrates pl ace from the top down as it has a depth as a whole that is limited only by the external horizon of this same field.
were. But only as it were, for the very directionalities of "up" and"down" The affinity of horizon-cum-depth to the phenomenon of "lift-up-over sounding"
ar � �egacies of bod�y orient ation in pl aces ( as Kant reminds us) and are in Feld's descriptive term for the Kaluli experience of immersion in places of the
elicited by powers inherent m pl�ces themselves (as Aristotle affirms). It Papua New Guinea rainforest calls for further exploration (see Feld, this volume).
7. See Descartes (1985 [1644]: Part Two, sections 10-20). In section 10, Descartes
would be mor� accu�ate t_o say srmply, and in conclusion, that as places
says that"there is no real distinction between space, or internal place, and the cor­
( gat�e� bodi�s m their midst in deeply enculturated ways, so cultures poreal substance contained in it; the only difference lies in the way in which we are
conJom bodies in concrete circumstances of empl acement. accustomed to conceive of them" (1985 [1644):227). As equivalent to"space,""inter­
nal place" is tantamount to three-dimensional volumetric extendedness. "External
NOTES place" refers to the surface surrounding a given body in a place. For a more complete
1. See Kant (1950 (1787]: A 426 B 454ff.). In an antinomy treatment of Descartes-and of other early modern thinkers-see part three of my
reasons to assert the truth of both the theS1S and the antithe one has · comPellin_g book The Fate of Place (1996).
sis of a given propos1- 8. "Almost." I say, since Kant did note in passing that motion is "alteration of
 HOW TO GET FkOH SPACE TO PLACE I ◄9
◄8 I EDWARD I. CASEY

u sserl (1989:35); on changin g

50 [1787]: A 32 B 48).On "position" (Stelle), see K ant (1950 (1787]: A 263 17. On a different but related sense of locus, see H
l
t ���fi.�� erl (1989 :213): "I, e per son , am in space at this plac_e. O thers
place in space, see Huss th
alk, they p ay a v1s1t, an d so
?· It _is not �idely known that before 1772 (often taken as the moment of are over there, wh ere their b odies
forth, whereby ind ee d their s piri t
are.T
s, al on
h
g
ey
wi
g
t
o
h
for
t heir
a w
b odies, change their place in
t e cr itical tum ) , Kant designat ed his phil osophical projec t as that of "general tes place to
tion, h owever, is that it s ubordina
t space." T h e difficulty with this formu la
P enomenology." T he term "phenomenology" itself was b orrowe d fro m Lamber t's surroun i g w rld" (Husserl
space, concei ved of as "the space of the one objecti ve
d n o
phy sics, which Kant �ad read in the early 1760s. Simil arly, though to much differ­ e he pri rity f p ce .
1989:213), and thus fails to ackn owledg t o o la
:;nt effect, WJttgenste m sometimes describe d his philosophical work of the 1920s as l or machine whose pur­
phenomenology," but under the influence o f the e arly Vienn a Circle h e came to ab­ 18. In transpo rtation, I am passively carried by an anima
. r ition, I m ve i rder to pursue my own
poses are independent of my own; in t ans o n o
J ure the term. n the new pl ace to which I m ove.
Of
purposes, purpo s es t hat can be att ai n e d o nly i
10· On corporeal m · tentiona1·1ty and m · tentional threads see Merleau-Ponty of transpo rtation , b then I bend
course, I may choose to effect a transition by means ut
(l962: Introduc6on, Par t On·e). Merleau-Ponty rarely spe aks �f place as such, but
the animal or mechanical p urp oses to su
it the realization of my own aims. T he dif­
on �y r:�dm� it JS entaile d in e very thing he says ab ou t th e li ved body an d its "set­ where it wants to go and
ference, starkly put , is between lettin the horse roa m g
or
tmg (milieu), l andscape" (paysage), or "wo rl d " (monde). H usserl h ad already singled
the voluntarmess of b odily mov ement as a noncontingent chara cter: "In virtue steerin g it to my own destination . F or fur
ther discussion of moving betwe
en places,
.
0 its faculty of free mobility, the subject can now induce the flow of the sy stem of see Casey (1993: ch . 9).
onty (1968:266), neither
Its appe aranc:s. • : , With regard to all other thing s, I have the freedom to change at 19. So say both Hei degger (1972:17) and Merleau-P
will my pos1t1on m relation to them" (1958: Second Book, 166-67). knowing the other had so spoken .
ories, see Casey (1987:
ll. See Basso, this vol ume: "As places animate the i deas and feelings of persons 20. On the special aptitude of places for holding mem
whO attend to them, these same ide as and feelings animate the places on which at­ ch. 9).
t po sited by Leibniz in
tention h as been bestowed ." 21. Such sameness of place contrasts strikingly with tha
iz, t be in e same pl ace signifies merely
12.On t�e aesthesiological body, see Hu sserl (1989:297), along with p. 163 on his Fifth Letter to Cl arke (1716). For Leib n o th
er object
n principle be o ccupie d by any oth
the body_as a ph y sical-aesthesiological unity." O n sonesthesia, see Fel d , this vol ume. to be in a position or "site" (sit u s) th at can i
f occup a i n. See Leib iz (1956: 1145- 48).
and that stays unch anged by the fac t o t o n
Concernmg the b�dy as a "fi�]d of localiz ation," see Husserl (1989: section 38, esp. gue c onfigurational types," see Husserl
P· 159).T he, term operative mten t1onality," employed in the previous paragr aph , is 22. On "morp holo gic a l co n cep t s of va
ssions;' see Husserl (1970:
also Husserl s_an� JS .
describe d by Merle au-Ponty a s "that which produces the n atur al (1982: section 74). C oncerning "essentially occasional expre ntial to orient actual
"i is e sse
and antepredicatJve unity of the worI d and of ou r ]'r ·
· g apparent m our desires,
ue, bem · section 36). In an essentially occasional expressio n, t
. he pe ker e itu i " (1970: 315). Husserl gives
our evaluations and in the. landscape we see, more cI ear1y th an m · objec
· ti· ve knowle dge" meaning to t he occasion, t s a and th s at on
.. e speaker ' v g ely b ounded spatial e n­
th e example of " here," which "desig nate s th
s a u
(MerIeau-Ponty 1962:xvm; my aalics).
me i g f e w r is firs c i tute d in the variable
. 13- See Kant (1928 [1_768):21-22). Atistotle had already recognized the rela­ vir o nment .. ..T he genuin e an n o th o d t onst
. atments of these sa me
t vity 0 he three d1mens1onal dyads to bodily p osition: "Relatively to us th ey­ pre sentation of this place" (1970:317). F or contemporary tre
, especi ally cha pter 6, "De­
a�ove, [e�ow, nght, left [etc.]- are not alway s the sa me but come to be in .relation matters in ana lytical phil oso phy, s ee M atth ew s (1982)
i e smen t of "here" (see
monstrative Identification:• which includes a discer g n n ass s
o ur _p ositio_n _[thesis], accordin� as we Wr n ourselves about" (Physics 208 b 14-16).
;u; this relat ivity to �he body_ 1s (1980) , e peci lly i brief iscu ss io n of demonstratives as
for_ Aristotle a contingent fact, since in his view pp. 151-69), and Kripke s a h s d
of the definite ar ticle
"in nat e [en te p husei] each [dimension] is distinct and separate" (P hysics 208 b 18). "rigid designators" on pages 10n and 49n . Notice that the use
g i , is often uninfo rmative as
Husserta �ues, on �he co ntrary, that _ such bodily based dimensionality is a necessary to refer to a place, th ou g h perfec tl y permis sib l e in E n l sh
:
structure. 'All s pati al be m g necessarily appears in such a way that it appears either to location: "th e gar age," " the gro cery s tore,"
" the lake." In such cases, the loc ation is
near_er or farther, ab ove or below, right or left.. .. T he body (Leib) wn i a ce, s w e we say, "Meet me at the libr ary. "
· ' . . then h as, fcor 1· t s presumed to be kno n adv n a h n
ee Geertz
p ic" e rie f me i g,
23. For a convincing critique of "stratigra
n s
par ticular ego, the urnq ue d1st1nc t10n of bearing in itself the zero point of all these h th o s o an
. .
onentat1ons" (H usserl 1989:166; he italicizes "zero point") (1973 :37-51).
i· .
14. On the bi-gendered body see Strathem (1988)· Con · cerning bi-locati on, see
Levy-Bruh] (1978:·5 -17) • In a stn mg instance of bi-location, a Chambri informant
24. I take l andscape to be distinct from geography, which is
. Excep for e
a second - order rep­
two-handedness that is a
. resentation of a p h y sic al p la ce o r region t th
. nee d be present;
m sb c ard to w�ch ance_stors were believed to have moore d a conditio n of orientation in re ading a map, in ge ography no body
b�:�:dt;;:��� , ere�_am.� ;Jere I am! (Frederick Errington and Deborah Gewer tz indeed , disembod ime n t i s a ge o gr a p h ical i d eal. B ut we are in a landscape only by
' sca pe and geography,
personal commurucat1on, 1993). grace of being bodily there. On the distinc tion between land
15. ?n the flesh of the worl d, see Merleau-Ponty (1968 :123, 267) see Straus (1963:308).
of place-including
16. Toynbee 1s profoundly right to sugges t that the nomad is ·. . h who does 25. It will be notice d that I have been attempting to spe ak
not move. . . Of course, the nom ad moves, but while seated , and h� is o� e face f place, it expre i e facie s o r sensuous su rf ace­
_ : s landsca pe, const r u ed as th o s ss v
:�e mov mg �the Bed ou m galloping, knees on the saddle, sitting e mind is its own
on the sol:s i;�i�
.. . without making any reference to mind. Even if it is tr ue that "th
P urned fee t , a feat of ba la nce')" (Deleuze and Guattari 1986 51
· , the1r Jtal1cs, Wit . r " e mi is the p lace of forms" (Aristotle, De
h place" (Milton, Paradise Lost) o that th nd
reference t o Toy nbee 1947:164_86).
Anima), such stateme nts do not establish that the mind
, even the savage mind, is
 WATERFALLS Of IONG I 109
10s I mm mo

LAND AS WATER AS LAND

In The Sorrow of the Lonely and· the Burning of the Dancers,
marked for both their contour in the surrounding land and their impact Edwar d L.
on shapmg the water be low-for instance water PN + sa-wel "waterfall s:
Schieffelin notes the connectedness ofBosavi lands and water
c rest" or ledge; water PN + sa-mi, a "wate�fall drop- off" or b�eak point;
Most places in the forest are named after the stream that gives the land its
wat er PN + sa-mogan, a "deep waterpool" at th e base of a waterfall; water
contours in that vicinity.... The waters, as they turn and fall, generate new
PN + sa-kof, where water breaks off a mogan beneath the fall; and water localities for every new configuration of the land. The name of a locality
PN + sa-ga, where water rej oins after a split below the fall. carries, in effect, its own geographical coordinates, which place it in determi­
Other ways in which downstream waterways are co -reference d with nate relation to the brooks and streams that flow through the forest. (1976:30)
landforms mclude water PN + da:l, wh ere a wate r section opens up to
Hence, the exp erience and naming of Bo savi lands and waters is
flow from a cleared gap; PN + du, marking a land or rock bank between
always inter p enetrated. This is most forcefully indicated by the flexibility
two se�ments of the same waterway; and PN + min, where one water
of attaching landfo rm de scriptive modifiers to sp ecific water names and
breaks mto two to rej oin later. When two creeks run roughly parallel
water-form modifiers to specific land names.
over a long stretch of land, thus coordinating land and water features, Primary examples of this process derive from the many small creeks
they are termed ida:ni galiali, "two of them lying/staying together. "
running along large stretches of land. In the community I kn ow best,
But the sensual primacy of water emerges in Kaluli naming practices
. a creek named Sulu is not just an abstract wate rcourse but one whose
m anoth�r "!'ay, namely, through the descriptive prominence of ono­
path connects to lands named Sulu do:mo: and Sulu fele. Moreover, even
atopoeic ideophon�s for water sound and motio n. While these ideo­
� though Sululeb (Sulu + eleb) marks where the Sulu creek comes to a
p o�es are co�on m talk about water ways, they only rarely substitute
head, it is equally a name for the arch of land where the Sulu stre am ends.
for either specific water names or fo r wate r descriptives. Six iconic pat­
And because the hill just beyond this particular place is where members
terns convey the sound sensations of the basic water motions:
o f Bono : cleare d land and built their lo nghouses in the 1960s, 1970s,
"falling" bu, bulu, gu, gulu, gulugulu, gululu and early 1980s, Sululeb is als o a longhouse sit e name and, by exte nsion,
"spraying" fu,fuga,Juwa:n the primary referent for p eople who live the re (Sululeb kalu, Sulule b
"flowing hard/fast" fo,Joo, oo
"flowing light/slow" tin, tintin, tiya, tiyatiya p eople). At the same time, eve ryone knows that Sulu is quite explicitly
"swirling" go, gogo, golo, gologolo, gololo a creek, with name d places along its banks whe re the re are varieties of
"splashing/plunging" kubu , kubukubu, tubu, tubutubu sago palms and named waterpools (Sulu mogan) and dips (Sulu bese), as
w ell as a downstream (Sulu kini), a waterfall (Sulu sa, Sulu sa-wel), and a
Further extensions of these terms use lengthened vowels to iconi-
cally mark du�ativ junction (Sulu so:k). What this example indicates is the constant play be ­
· e mt
· ensi�y,
· or syllabic reduplication to iconically mark
durative contmmty. Additi onally, ideophones can attach to regular ver­ tween sp ecific and general, p ersonal and social, momentary and histori­
bal morphology in talk, as well as attach to spe cial poetically marke d cal resonances for these names, along with the time -space connections
aspectual morphology m songs. In a few cases, placenames actually in­ they consummate in place .
corpora.te these sonic ideophones. The wate rfall named Gulusa (the sa of
PLACENAMES, LINGUISTIC REFERENCE, AND MEMORIAL INDETERMINACY
an icoruc_ally named c reek, the Gulu) is formed from gulu + sa "down­
ward fallmg water sound" + "waterfall."Bulusami, the place V.:here the The formula "PN + form descriptive" names and thereby implements
Bulu cree k (agam,. everyday emplacement, anchoring everyday talk descriptions of where
the name is ideophonic) j oins the Garno river bel ow a
�.arge waterfall and waterpool, is for med fromBulu + sa-mi Bulu creek + one is, has been, or is going. Additionally, tendencies in the formation of
waterfall-clrop edge," literally, "sound of l oud, downward rolling wate r placenames hold imp ortant p otentials re lated to memory and biography.
,, For the Kaluli, as for the neighboring Foi, "place names act as rrmemon­
sound + "drop place."In these examp1es the evocative powers of ideo-
.
phoruc exp ressi. on emplace the direct relationship of sound to sense in ics for the histor ical actions of humans that make places singular and sig­
the voice, forc<:fully linking everyday sensual experience to the aesthetic nificant" (Weiner 1991 :45). Some placenames se rve forcefully as short­
depths of poesis. hands, encapsulating stories ab out hist orical or mythical events whose
magnitudes var y from mundane to cosmic. SomeBosavi places, for ex­
ample, are named in relation to mythic origins or eve nts responsible for
 TOUI PLACE AND NINE I 169
168 I NIIIAN KAHN

I could imagine myself being. Soon after arr iving, I found myself one
as _ atype of moral landscape conve ying messages about human frailties,
after noon sitting on the fl oor of my room at the mission station o f
�01bles, and responsibilities. Meaning attached to the landscap e unfol ds
Dogura, tossing a coin to decide where to do my fie ldwork. After three
1? 13:°guage, names, stor ies, myths, and r ituals. These meanings cr ystal­
weeks of visiting various coastal and mountain villages on the eastern
l�e mto shared symb ol s and ultimately l ink p eople to a sense o f common
end of Pap ua New Guinea, expla ining my presenc e and my interest in
history 3:°d individual identity. Place become s "s omething both fixed
horticultural ritual to people I met and tr ying to imagine myself in the
and fl_eetmg, something you can walk on and something yo u can speak,
villages I saw, I had narrowe d the cho ice down to two places: a damp,
a cunous and uneasy product o f exper ience a nd symbol" (Richar dson
isolated mountain village and a sunny, expansive coastal village. As I
1984:1).
wondered about what seeme d to be the arbitrariness of choosing a place
Places capture the complex emotional, behavioral and moral re­
to do fieldwork, I realize d that I ha d kept tossing the coin over and over
lations�ps betwe en p eo ple and the i r terr itor y. They r�present p eople,
u ntil Wamira -the su nny village by the sea -won.
their actions, and the ir interactions and a s such become mallea ble memo­
Obviously, choice of an anthropological fie ld site follows matters o f
r ial� for �egotiating and renegotiating human rela tionships. Places and
the hear t as much as those of the mind. On the one hand, I rationalized
�heir st?ne� also become metaphor s that are heavily rel ied upon dur­
that Wamira was the p er fect place for aca demic research. It was large ;
mg so�1al discour se about relationships. They serve as a kind of "veiled
the irrigation system I wanted to stu dy inclu ded the only aqueduct in
speech (St rather n 1975) through which harsh realities can be softened
the Papuan par t of New Guinea ; the language wa s the lingua franca o f
by obl ique reference in order to preser ve harmonious social relations.
a larger region and knowing it woul d enable m e to do compara tive re ­
Talking about place becomes a euphemistic wa y of communicating im­
search in neighbor ing villages -and so on. Ye t what continually tugged
portant messages, such as reminde rs of social obligations that have gone
me in its direction was the fact that the emotio nal "fit" felt r ight. P hysi­
unfulfilled or of moral responsibilities to feed and care for kin.
cally, it seemed spacious, breezy, and sunny. The sea was in constant view.
It is imposs�ble to talk about place, or to talk about how people talk
Moreover, it wa s only an hour 's walk from Dogura with its ties to the
abou t place, w1th ? u t_ encompassing biogra phy, incl uding one 's own at
world beyond in the form of an airstr ip, a whar f, a post office, and a tra de
t�e pomts o f social mteracti?n. My under standing of Wamiran place
store. And most imp or tant, the Wamirans I ha d met appeare d we lcom­
l ies �ost p rofou ndly at the Junctu re of Wami ran biogra phy and my
ing, emotionally op en, and goo d-humored. I felt embraced by the ir ani­
autob1ograp�y. P laces blossom, along with my understanding of them,
mated p er sonalities. T hus, opp or tu nistic mome nts, my p ersonal leanings,
wher� �arrurans and I c�n�ect. Writing about "our " place is to write
and chance elements all came together to p ro duc e a fieldwor k location.
both mtimately and descr iptively about differences and commonalities.
Soon thereafter, loaded down with possessions that filled a small out­
My approach �te n_tio�a?Y co�bines my feelings and perspectives with
board motorboat, I moved into the village. Although I wanted to stay in
tho se _of Wamiran md1v1duals m order to highlight the sense o f place as
me_anmgful share d exper ience. I combin e the two perspectives in order the seemingly neutral village rest house, I wa s ushered away and encour­
aged to move int o th e home of Al ice Dobu n aba and her family. Alic e 's
to illust rate how m_uch of my growing understanding occu rred p recisely
when ou r perspec�1ves merged and mingled or diverged and clashed. daughter, then a student at the Univer sity o f Papua New Guinea , with
Because place 1s_many things and speaks in many voices-individual whom I had talked while I visited the capital city of Por t Moresby, ha d
. written a letter of introduction for me to use when I toured the region.
biography, share � �sto r y, meaningful memor y, and moral lesson, as well
. As a result, Alice felt resp onsible for my well-being. "You need someone
as eupherrusm-: It 1s constantl y shifting, emerging or receding, being ac­
centuated or veiled. But ultimatel y, places are, fo r Wamirans as th ey are to take care of you," I was told, "to cook yo ur food and to help you with
for me, profoundly emotional terr itories. your work." I later lear ned that in Wami rans' eyes, the rest house was not
an option if I was to be integra ted into village life by entering a web of

social exchanges and relations. The social act of Alic e's feeding, caring
TWO PERSPECTIVES ON ONE "PLACE" for, and helping me and my recip ro cal obligation to p rovide her family
My anthropological journey began one day in 1976 when I 1e_fit hom e with trade-store goods were what c reated my place -not the physical
and all that was familiar and comfor ting· I had decid;d
to work m papua existence of an abandoned government rest house.
New Gum · ea precis
• ely because it was the last place in the world in which Before long, the space that had been cleared for me in the back o f her

•
 INDEX I 293

292 I INDEX
on
es World Soundscape Project (Sim
Symbols,33,53,178 Understandings,57,75-76,125 William the Conqueror, placenam Fraser University),95
and,240, 256n 14
Synesthesia,22, 91, 92-94, 93, 146 Union Chapel community,212-13 Wright,Patrick,253
Universals,28-32, 43, 44,50n26, 50n27 Wisdom, 66,71-72, 81; gaining,76-
ut,
Tal un (lines),116 University of Toronto Center for 77,79; place and,72-73; story abo XPD (Deighton), quote from
,229
67-70; trail of, 80, 86; Wes tern
Tamodukorokoro,188,194; attempted Culture and Technology, media 13
destruction of, 184; contemporary transformations and, 94 Apache,73,75-76, 86,89n12,90n Yagaf,123
Wisdom sits in places,76 Y i-Fu Tuan, 47n2
Wittgenstein, Ludwig J- J-, on phe­
version of, 190-92; famine and,173- Uprootedness,3, 53,261
74; myth of,175,176,178,179; plain, Urstift ung, 51n33 Young,Arthur, 175,251
176 (photo) nomenology, 48n9
Wo:lu,122,124,134
Tauanana stone,181 (photo) Van Gennep, Arnold: space/spatiality Zuckerkandl,Victor,95
Worewore,stones at,184
Tauribariba stone,180-82,183 (photo), and, 40; on territorial passage,39-
194,195n5; placement of,181-82 40; theoretical space and, 40; on
Taussig, Michael, 165n4; cultural mean­ threshold,51n39
ing and,165n7; on mimesis, 93, Mlrieties of Sensory Experience, The
159 (Howes), 96
Territorial passage,39-40 Vision-sound interplays, Kaluli, 99-100
Tewas,worldview of,225 Voices of the Rainforest, 114,128,130
Texting, 139
T homas,Maud: on Black Ankle,205 Wagner, Roy, 95
Thompson, Nick, 82, 90n15 Walter, E. V.: on placeways,3
T houghts, place-based,55 Wamira, 7,195n3; famine for, 173-74;
Threshold,52n39; place-bound,39-40 hunger and,175; myth of, 174, 175-
Time,13,14; co-locating,38; decon- 77; place and, 10,168; settling in,169,
struction of,38; gendering,126-27; 170,172
place and,36,38, 43, 44,51nn34, Water: land and,109; place naming
36,107; posteriority of,36; pure,28; and, 107-8; sensual primacy of, 108;
space and,36, 47n1,53,109 singing with,133-34
Tok (path),102-3, 106,115,117,125 l¼terland (Swift), quote from, 249
Topology, experiential, 44 Water name, pig name and,121-22
Toponyms, 9,50n29, 238,239,240 Watiwati, Hilarion, 171 (photo)
Toynbee,Arnold, 23, 48n16 Weiner,James, 6, 88n2; on placenames,
Trail Goes Across Scorched Rocks,77 14,114
Trail Goes Down Between Two Hills, Western Apaches,89n7,197; mental
62 (photo), 82, 261; naming of, 60, development and,76; place and, 7, 9,
61-63; Old Man Owl and, 64, 65,66 11,58-61, 83-85, 86,238
Transformations, 15; media, 94 West Robeson High School,210;
Transition, 40, 41, 49n18 student divisions at,211
Translati ons (Friel), 243; quote from,241 W here Earthquake Broke Open the
Translinguistics,141 Ground There,261
Transrootedness,3 Where'.s That?, 236-37
Travelers,place and,248 Whitehead, Alfred North,37-38, 45
Trunks, branches and, in Kaluli song, Whiteness Spreads Out Extending
131 Down To Water,68-69
Truths,universals and,28 Wiggins,William,Jr.: on homecoming,
Tulunei,112,116,125,126 223
Tuning of the World, The (Schafer), 95 Wildness,35,51n32,152
Turquoise Ridge,81 Williams,Raymond,257n27; on
Covent Garden,254
Ulahi, 115 (photo),119,120,129,261; Williamson,Tom,255n12; on Norfolk,
songs by, 114-17, 125-34,135n1 255n5